


Die Wenigen Glücklichen

by queer_cheer



Category: The Man in the High Castle (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Character Development, Eventual Smut, Eventual Time Travel, F/M, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, JOHN AND ERICH FINALLY KISS!, M/M, Multiple Realities, Multiverse, Mystery, Racism, Science Fiction, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture, Violence, anti-Semitism, implied PTSD, slow-burn romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-05 00:28:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 59,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12179433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queer_cheer/pseuds/queer_cheer
Summary: It all started with a mysterious film delivered by an anonymous courier, and a bad idea that seemed necessary at the time.John Smith hadn't meant to become the face of a revolution, and consequently, the most wanted criminal in the Reich. He'd just wanted to hurt the bastards that took away his boy. Joe hadn't meant to get wrapped up in something he barely understood, Erich hadn't intended to betray his family's legacy, and Robert never thought he'd leave San Fransisco. But sometimes, love and survival in dystopia demand a level of insanity, a degree of courage, and a whole lot of luck.





	1. Of Fathers and Sons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sassmaster_tiresias](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sassmaster_tiresias/gifts).



> IT'S HERE! The Big Fic! I've been drafting this bastard on and off again for ages, sending it to Laura and crying about headcanons and ideas, and finally I think it's coherent enough to begin posting. Season 3 will probably render it all AU, but as of now, it's fairly canon-complacent, except with more gay folks. As it should be, tbh.
> 
> Enjoy! x

John Smith awoke with a start, his palms clammy and his shirt sticky with sweat.

At first, he couldn’t quite figure out what had pulled him up from the tossing and turning of unsound sleep. It could’ve been any number of things, really, from the hiss of the monorail’s brakes along the nearby tracks to the wail of distant sirens. Like New York, Berlin was a city that never slept, and it seemed almost as though it did all in its power to ensure that its tenants didn’t, either.

Sitting up, John rubbed the sleep from his eyes and let out a long, slow sigh. Outside his window, the city breathed like a dormant beast, but inside, he could only stare miserably at the cream-colored wall ahead of him. 

His room looked like every other room in every other hotel in every other city he’d stayed in: Warm lighting, when he flicked on the lamp, and gentle patterns along the stiff, clean carpets meant to imitate the feeling of home.

But it wasn’t home. The vacancy beside him in the bed reminded him that it wasn’t even close.

If the city sounds hadn’t drawn him up, it could’ve been loneliness, concern, or maybe even guilt, if he squinted. He never could sleep well without Helen beside him, and now, with almost four-thousand miles pulling them apart, she felt suddenly unreal. Like the memory of a dream he’d woken from far too soon. 

He glanced over at the phone, and then down at his watch.

3:24. That would make it 9:24 in New York, if his math was right. Maybe he ought to give her a call.

But then again, she hadn’t answered his last four calls, and after call number three, John had started to wonder whether or not it might do him well to give her some space. He’d be home in less than a day, after all. And considering the note on which he’d left—blotted with harsh words he knew she didn’t mean—space might’ve been the only real cure to whatever lovesickness ailed them.

But as he laid back down, he feared that the space between them might’ve been greater than the distance between New York and Berlin. The thought stirred something deep and unpleasant in his gut. 

He hated the cream-colored walls and the warm lighting and the stiff, clean carpets. He just wanted to go home, more than anything. 

A knock at his door pulled him up, and before he’d even consciously realized he was standing, he reached into his briefcase and fondled the barrel of his gun.

3:26. Why, he wondered, would he have a visitor at 3:26? 

Locked and loaded, he moved towards the door.

Another knock. More frantic, this time. Hurried.

“Yes?” He called out, hoping his voice didn’t sound as meek to the guest as it sounded to him.

A pause. Silence rang in his ears and pressed down on his chest. He sucked in a breath and held it. Fingers clenched around the handle, he threw open the door and aimed his gun at the empty air that met him on the other side of the threshold. 

The corridor was silent and still. John found himself frozen for a beat, puzzled as he turned to glance nervously from side to side. No doors sat opened, no footsteps met his ears, and no movement stirred the darkness through which he squinted and stared.

He would’ve sworn it was madness that drew him out of his room in the dead of night, had it not been for the package sitting at his feet. A package that he knew, with a fair degree of certainty, hadn’t been there before.

Crouching down, he examined the brown paper wrapping with a knot of unease. 

_J. Smith_ , read the writing scrawled across the front. _For Your Eyes Only._

Suspicious, he thought. Every instinct he’d developed as a soldier told him to either call someone more adept at dealing with strange packages that arrived in the twilight hours of morning, or to return to his room, tuck himself into the rigid bed, and hope that when he awoke, it would be gone. That way, he could convince himself it’d never been there at all.

But naturally, that isn’t what he did. He might’ve, had he not spotted a smaller set of writing just beneath the wrapping’s fold. He couldn’t quite make it out, and so carefully, he held his breath and pulled the fold back. Part of him expected an explosion, or the release of chemical gas that would inevitably kill him before he realized its danger. Part of him wasn’t afraid of such a prospect, and frankly, that part alarmed him much more.

But nothing happened, aside from the sticky release of tape and the crinkle of paper, much too loud against the static drone of quiet, that disclosed a message John would’ve rather left unseen.

_Genesis 22. Of Fathers and Sons._

His breath caught in his throat. He didn’t know what it meant, aside from the fact that it referenced a book he hadn’t heard of in years, and that book was, among other things, illegal. And beyond that, beyond the stirring illegality, there was the implication of something much more dangerous and troublesome: Of Fathers and Sons? He thought instantly of Thomas, and something in his chest burned. He felt too far away, too distant, too absent. Something changed in the air around him as he read the same three words over and over again. Something, somewhere, felt wrong. 

He gathered the package and brought it into his room. He wanted to leave it there, tucked against his door, but the parent in him beat out the Nazi, and he whisked it away out of sight before the wrong set of eyes could find it.

When he shut his door, he locked it. And because that didn’t feel safe enough, he snagged the little yellow chair from the table in the corner and tucked it tightly under the handle.

It wasn’t possible for someone else to know about Thomas. Except, he thought with a start, Juliana Crane. Juliana Crane, whose alliances were yet unclear, whose help-me-up façade had captured the heart of the Reichsführer’s son. Juliana Crane, who Thomas had sought out for answers to questions he shouldn’t have even known to ask. 

He set the parcel down on the desk and stared at it, with one hand tucked against his hip and the other pressed against his mouth in contemplation. 

_What now?_

He tore off the message, the prohibited verse, and tucked it away into his pocket with a mental note to look into it, when he could. Standing over the package, he pulled the wrappings away carefully, deliberately, until he came to a familiar steel disc. His blood either froze or curdled; he wasn’t sure which.

_A film._

 

***

If there’s one thing that John should’ve learned in his years spent at war, it was that all bad ideas seemed like good ones at first.

And, like all bad ideas before it, taking the enigmatic film that appeared at his door in the dead of the night all the way across Berlin, by foot, to a theatre that was probably closed, seemed like a perfectly necessary thing to do. 

The reservations he should’ve had were chased away by the thought of Thomas, the gnawing fear in his gut put there by a series of what if’s he could neither confirm nor deny until Helen answered the damn phone. He’d called her twice before setting out, and with each ring left unattended, he felt his anxieties grow. Messages he'd left fell on empty ears, sugar-coated and spoken in code, because someone somewhere was always listening. 

He swallowed hard. 

It was raining outside, and he was beginning to realize that Berlin really wasn’t much different from New York. Both were bright and bustling during the day, but both fell from their separate glories by night and became the kind of places that hid secrets. Under the cover of darkness, every friendly face became a potential threat, and every potential threat became a new way to face death. John shuddered. 

He wasn’t sure which he qualified as, but he hoped it was the latter. 

The feeling of eyes locked on him only seemed to worsen as he trudged through puddles in his leather Wehrmacht coat, and the reel of film tucked under his shirt started to feel just a little heavier than before. He eyed the silhouette of the theatre a few blocks ahead, and for the first time, he wondered what the hell he was doing.

He was set to fly home the following day—home to his picket-fence life, to Helen, to his girls, to Thomas. The idea of being away from him any longer that he had to be all but broke his heart. The days were starting to feel rather limited; it was only a matter of time until his boy would be bound for South America. And there he was, he thought bitterly, almost four thousand miles away acting against an order in such a way that, should he be found out, would only serve to prolong his time in Berlin, away from the life he’d fought for so desperately.

All because of some film that was probably just propaganda. Maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe it wasn’t about Thomas at all; maybe he’d put that spin on things himself because frankly, he was scared to death about what tomorrow would bring. 

But, as he drew nearer to the theatre’s daunting profile, he knew he’d come too far to turn back. Something in him had been altered as he stood in the Volkshalle poised before one-hundred thousand civilians, all eyeing him with such reverence, such awe, that one might’ve thought they believed him to be something more than human.

At first, he mistook the swell of emotion in his chest for pride as he stood there, raw and exposed in the arena’s synthetic light. He’d come from nothing, after all. Back before the War, when he was just a poor shoe-shine boy living on curdled milk and stale bread, he’d sworn that he’d be something great and unforgettable; that he’d do something world-changing and better than the mining work that killed his father or the swindling that put his uncle on death row. 

And he did.

So why didn’t it feel right?

Why was it fear that took pride’s place? Fear of scale? Fear of grandeur? No; fear of losing the one thing he’d always wanted; a family.

Because the only thing worse than being forgotten was being alone. He’d sooner die than be alone.

John held his breath as he glanced around him. The streets were empty, now. The eyes he’d felt at his back had slinked back into the shadows, and so he crouched down before the theatre’s ornate double-doors to pick the lock with the knife he kept tucked in his boot.

Slipping inside, he gave the empty streets a final, faltering glance before pulling the entrance shut behind him.

It took his eyes a few seconds to adjust to the darkness, but once they did, he made his way down the corridor, using the wall as a general guide. He fondled for a light switch, and once he found it, he flipped it on. Cast in a dull, copper-like glow, the theatre seemed larger and somehow more refined. The carpet was dark crimson and dotted with crème-colored swastikas for emphasis; a reminder of where and what John was. He found it suddenly difficult to stomach, and so he looked forward instead of at his feet.

The projector room was to the left of the showroom and up a flight of stairs, nestled snugly between the men’s bathroom and a storage closet. To John’s surprise, it was already unlocked. 

Had he not been lulled into it by the tug of curiosity, he might’ve been suspicious of the ease with which he entered. As a solider, he didn’t trust anything that came without a fight. But as an idealist—and frankly, he was an idealist long before he was anything else—he called it dumb luck.

_You’re a madman,_ he thought to himself as he hesitantly pulled the film out from the inner tuck of his coat and loaded it into the projector. _Haven’t you heard what curiosity did to the cat?_

His reservations came too late. The projector had already started to spin and a sheet of white appeared against the screen below. The light was almost blinding—he hadn’t anticipated it, though he probably should’ve—and even when the picture appeared, cracked and distorted, John could hardly believe his eyes. 

_Thomas?_

The breath caught in his throat. It was worse than he’d feared; more striking, more dreadful, more real.

_It isn’t possible…_

He had expectations about what he’d see—war, death, dying, losing, winning, but not this. Never this. A horror that defied his worst anticipations.

The screen bore a newsreel-style image of Thomas laying amid the rubble of a burned house. Overgrown and flowerless hedges, broken windows, and blackened grass set the stage for something foreign but eerily familiar, something new but not different. With a pang of an indescribable agony, John realized that the ruins were set in New York; the same house he’d left barely a day ago. 

Thomas’ cheeks were pulled taut in pain and his fingers clasped limply at a dark spot on his chest. The moment he realized it was blood, John leapt forward, his hand extended towards the screen as if he could reach into it and pull Thomas out and set his world right once again. He was sure he cried out to the echoic emptiness surrounding him, but suddenly, his tongue wasn’t his own. His eyes saw someone else’s reality, and his hands shook with someone else’s fear.

But the film continued. John couldn’t bring himself to stop it. He stood before the horror, frozen in place like a statue erected to commemorate something terrible. Aside from the unsteady tremor to his hands, he couldn’t move. He could hardly breathe, let alone think. 

Amy and Jennifer laid by Thomas, unmoving, and in front of them, Helen was on her knees. Tears parted the dirt and grime on her cheeks and her lips divided in a silent scream. A man stepped behind her with a strange weight in his hands.

The film was silent, but John swore he heard the shot as she slumped forward like a ragdoll, her golden hair matted with blood.

And then the screen was blank. John stood in the projector’s pale light, cheeks damp with tears he hadn’t noticed at first.

A throng of thoughts swarmed in his head like angry bees. He pressed a hand over his trembling lips and stumbled backwards until he hit the projector room’s farthest wall. He slid down until he was sitting, his knees drawn up to his chest, fighting back the surge of intermingled panic and grief that threatened his composure.

It was just a film, he told himself, perhaps preemptively. It was just a movie. But it was so real.

It was real in the way that every unknown became real in that beat of stillness between sleep and wake, where dreams mingled with truth and nightmares seeped in through cracks in clarity. It wasn’t possible, and yet it was, because he’d seen it with his own bleary eyes and there was no way it could be doctored to such precision, such breathtaking reality.

“Breaking and entering, huh?” 

John scrambled to his feet and reached for his gun, pointing it in the direction of the sudden, unexpected voice. There in the foyer stood the last person he’d ever expected to see again: Joe Blake. He’d half-expected a crowd of soldiers, and in truth, he wasn’t sure which he would’ve preferred.

His weapon shook in his hands. He opened his mouth to speak, but he couldn’t find the words. His heart hammered so hard it hurt, and when he swallowed, his throat felt full. 

“Picking locks, watching films, it looks like our international hero’s got some bad-guy hobbies.” Joe stalked in, tucking his thumbs into his pockets and looking up at the now-blank screen. “What’d you see, Smith? Did you see yourself die?” 

“You’re not--”

“In prison?” Joe interrupted with a humorless laugh. “Yeah, they let me go. No thanks to you. Heusmann told them I didn’t know a thing about anything,” Joe paused, his expression twisting into something that looked a little like grief. “They’ll kill him, you know.” 

“Yes,” John cleared his throat, his thoughts four-thousand miles away. “I suspect they will.” 

Joe took a fast step closer to John, and he tightened his hand around his gun. 

“Are you going to shoot me, Smith?” 

“Why did you follow me?” 

“I didn’t follow you. I saw you breaking into the theatre and I did what any _upstanding citizen_ of the Reich would do,” He spat the title, as if he could hardly bear its bitter taste. “I could have you arrested. It’s illegal to watch those, isn’t it?” 

“I could have you shot,” John countered, snatching the film back from the projector and tucking it back into his coat. “Forget you saw me, or I just might.” 

He made a move to leave, but Joe stepped in front of the door.

“It doesn’t work like that.” 

Joe noticed that something, somehow, was off. There was a drag to John’s steps, a delay to his quick-witted tongue, and perhaps most surprising, a subtle wetness to his red-rimmed eyes. He would’ve thought it looked like he’d been crying, but he knew far better. John Smith, the Hangman of Manhattan, the coldest heart east of Berlin, wasn’t nearly human enough for trivial things like puffy eyes and damp cheeks. 

“You want something from me?” Joe crossed his arms. “I want something in return.” 

John gave him a forceful shove; not meant to hurt him or even move him for that matter. It was the kind of shove Joe might’ve expected from Buddy when the world just got a little too overwhelming and he had no other way to express his innumerable frustrations, not from the man hailed as a hero by every goddamn Nazi the world had to offer. 

“I just need to get back to New York,” John hissed. “This film, Joe…” He paused to catch his breath, careful not to let his poise slip too far. “This film shows a reality I need to prevent.” 

Joe almost laughed. 

“What, do you have another war to prevent? Hitler’s dead. The world is saved. All hail Obergruppenführer Smith!” He mocked. “That’s how you wanted it, isn’t? You’d be famous. A household name. A legacy. That’s all you ever wanted, huh?” 

John blinked, dazed. “Of course it isn’t.” 

All he’d ever wanted was a family, and he’d seen that taken from him minutes ago. With a frenzied surge of panic, he tried to push his way past Joe, but for as skilled as John was, Joe was younger and faster and in one swift movement, he had John pinned against the wall, his own gun pressed to his temple.

“Give me one good reason not to blow your fucking brains out,” 

“Juliana Crain,” John whispered without missing a beat. He watched realization flicker in Joe’s eyes, and with a slight surge of victory, he knew that he’d won. “If you kill me, you’ll be shot and you’ll never see her again.” 

“How do I even know she’s alive?” Joe countered, twisting his hand into John’s collar until the fabric was wound tightly around his neck. “How do I know you aren’t lying to get what you want?” 

“She can be of use to both of us,” John tried again to push Joe away, but in response, Joe stiffened his steel grip and the air suddenly became much thicker.

“Where is she?” 

“Don’t know,” John gasped out. The moment Joe let him go, he fell back against the wall and clutched his throat, stricken. “I need to get back to New York, Joe. And if you let me do that, and if you find out what Miss Crain knows about these films, I’ll do anything you want in return.” 

Joe lifted a skeptical brow.

“You don’t strike me as the type to beg,” 

“I’ll beg if you wish it,” He snatched the film from the reel and tucked it away into his coat. “This is something that goes beyond you and I, Joe, it goes beyond war and peace and the grey in between.” 

Joe scoffed. “Why should I help you?” 

“Because they’ll kill my son!” He blurted out, and before the words had even left his lips, he regretted it. He’d disclosed something dark and dangerous and deeply secret, something he hadn’t even told Helen at first. Joe’s lips parted in wordless shock, but it wasn’t shock that John saw. He saw instead his own vulnerability flash in the eyes of a stranger; he’d given Joe Blake leverage to use against him, and in doing so, he’d lost whatever battle of character and wits he’d been fighting. 

“Joe,” His voice dropped to a whisper, his cheeks suddenly pale. “I--”

“That’s what you saw in the film you watched?” Joe shook his head in disbelief. “What the hell are you hiding, Smith?” Joe pulled a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his trousers and lifted one to his lips. He extended one out to John, then, and after a moment’s deliberation, he accepted.

“You have to understand,” He exhaled a puff of smoke. “There is nothing in this world I won’t do to ensure that they don’t touch him. I’d sooner ruin myself and forsake my reputation, my pride, my role, my life, Joe, because everything I’ve done has been for them.” 

“What does Juliana have to do with any of that?” 

John shook his head.

“I’m not certain. But Thomas trusted her.” 

Joe leaned against the wall and smoked, his silence filled with twists of silvery-white. After a pause, he glanced over at John and heaved a heavy sigh.

“You find Juliana Crain and you tell Himmler to pardon my father.” 

John’s lips twitched and his eyes fluttered shut.

“I can’t do that, Joe, I’m not the damn Führer. Heusmann is charged with high treason; there’s nothing I—or anyone, for that matter—can do to mitigate the damage he’s done to the Reich.” 

Joe’s eyes narrowed.

“What kind of treason would this be considered?” He reached for John’s coat, but John pulled himself away. “Where’d you get it, anyway?” 

“It came to me in my hotel,” He confessed. “I had reason to believe it required my immediate attention regarding…sensitive material.” 

“Your kid, huh?” 

John nodded. 

“Miss Crain is the only other person, aside from Helen and myself, that knows Thomas is in danger,” He smoothed out the wrinkles in his white standard-issue button-down. “I wonder if she sent the film. Or at the very least, knows who did.” 

Lips pursed, Joe stubbed his cigarette’s smoldering bud out against the wall.

Maybe it was a little bit wrong, he thought, to wager Juliana as a prize. But he just wanted to see her again! Not like he’d seen her in Berlin, through a haze of unreality, a smog of intoxicated grandeur, but rather like he’d seen her in Canon City. With her hair down, riding in the passenger side of his truck while the sun rose to her back. He’d fallen in love, then, hopelessly and without doubt, with the image of a woman who was only half-true. 

There had been a window in his jail cell before he’d been pardoned, and through it he’d stared at the full moon with such certainty that it would be the last he’d ever see. And funnily, he’d thought of Juliana, and he’d thought of how she had a dark side that was just as celestial and poetic as the moon’s own shadowed back; secretive, well-hidden, and entirely unknown to the wandering eye.

He hated John Smith to such an extent that when he looked at him, he felt a low and steady burn in the pit of his stomach that climbed up into his chest and steeped there, like a kettle boiling over. But Thomas was just a child, a product of his father’s sin. He was a bitter contradiction of average and dystopian; the more Joe fell in love with the memory of Juliana’s oval face and almond eyes, the more he’d begun to see people as distinctly human, neither good nor evil, neither right nor wrong. And for a moment—and only a moment—he saw John as a desperate father, shaking and afraid, rather than the man he’d come to despise.

“Alright,” Joe said after what felt like too long. “You find Juliana and I’ll help you figure out this _Man in the High Castle_ thing.” A pause, laced in resentment. “But don’t think for a second that I’m doing it for you. I’m doing it because Thomas is a kid that doesn’t deserve the shit you’ll put him through.” 

With quiet yet unmistakable relief, John gave a stiff nod. There was a flicker of remorse that passed across his face, but it was gone as quickly as it had come. Or at the very least, it was well-hidden.

“Thank you, Joe.”

When they left the theatre, they parted ways. Berlin existed on the precipice of night and day—the unease of nightfall had faded in dawn’s lilac glow, and yet the bustle of morning hadn’t yet set in. The roads were empty and damp with puddles that splashed beneath John’s boots. He sucked in a breath of cool air, and it tasted like rain.

He peered out at the city unfurling around him, its exquisite architecture, its leafy-green tree tops, and he hoped beyond hope that it would be the last time he ever had to see it.


	2. Invictus

John had hated New York since the moment he saw it, with its smog-filled skies and definitive city odors, but as his driver maneuvered through the twists and turns of familiar streets, he’d never felt happier to be back.

And when the car pulled up in front of his fine-trimmed hedges in the heart of eastern suburbia, he thanked every god he’d ever forsaken for the fact that the house was not, in fact, a pile of ash. He shut his eyes and thought of the film, and for the first time since he’d left Berlin, the whole thing just felt like a bad dream. Maybe that’s all it was.

He muttered a quick thank you to his driver—Jasper, a fine young boy that reminded him almost too much of his Thomas—and rushed towards the front door. He thought instantly of the way Helen’s perfume would remind him of summer, and how the warmth of his little girls’ hugs would chase away the horrors of the past day and a half, and he almost smiled.

But when he tried the handle, the door didn’t budge. His face fell. A glance towards the driveway didn’t tell him why; Helen’s car sat there, obnoxiously yellow in the light of early dawn. He tried the door again, only half-expecting a different result, and when it still sat sealed, he rummaged through his bag for his set of keys.

_Strange,_ he mused, his stomach fluttering with anxiety. _No one locks their doors around here._

There was an eerie stillness to the street, and for one horrid pause, John was reminded of the way Berlin felt beneath the cover of night. Watchful and omniscient, vindictive and, for lack of a better word, unsafe. He pushed open the door, his bag discarded and forgotten in the foyer.

“Helen?” 

Silence. 

“Thomas?” It was more of a plea than a call, almost like a prayer. His voice cracked like plaster and his chest felt compressed. The air was swampy and warm, and beads of dust swam through the glow of sunbeams sneaking in through a wrinkle in the blinds.

The den sat in a state of disarray, with papers haphazardly strewn about and books knocked from the shelf sitting in messy piles at his feet. The radio was left on, and through a haze of distant static, Beethoven played over the buzz of quiet. His office was no different than the parlor, with a ransacked desk and missing hunting rifles stolen out from behind the broken glass of his armory.

John rushed upstairs, and in the place of the family photos that once hung on the wall, there was a splatter of blood. His eyes fell to the ground, where scarlet smears stained the pale white carpet leading down to the closed bedroom door at the end of the hall.

He felt sick. Every nerve buzzed with electric fear, and every muscle ached with a silent longing that he couldn’t explain. He followed the trail down the corridor against his better judgement, his gun held firmly in his clammy palm, and when he paused before the door, he swallowed the lump weighing in his throat.

He made up his mind then and there that if the other side of the door bore what he feared it might, he would put his gun to his temple without a breath of hesitation and spare himself the grief he knew he couldn’t stand. Maybe it was selfish, but if it was, then he was, too. Tears stung his eyes, stubborn and persistent, and with a sharp inhale and a hopeless prayer, he kicked open the door.

On the floor between the bed and the wall, a pair of German leather boots stuck out. As he drew nearer, a State-issued uniform came into view and he was met with the pallid, unfamiliar face of a man he’d never met. A young SS officer, he noted, barely commissioned, judging by the blood-stained ranks he wore around his neck.

Relief came first—relief that the corpse wasn’t Helen’s and the blood wasn’t his son’s. But confusion followed almost immediately, and it only grew at the sight of a stack of papers tucked neatly under Helen’s pillow.

He lifted them carefully, and the memory of the film hanging heavy in his coat stirred a new wave of unease. The first sheet bore the logo of the Public Health Department, and after a pause, John’s heart leapt into his throat and he couldn’t breathe. Thomas’ name was scrawled across the bottom, and along the top, the crystal-clear type-face font read _Certificate of Lawful Termination._

John read it over and over, but he wasn’t really taking any of it in. It didn’t matter what it said or what it didn’t; it all meant the same thing.

Thomas was dead.

John had always prided himself on his mastery of the English language, but as he stood there at the foot of his and Helen’s bed, holding onto the paper as if it was his lifeline, he felt a grief that transcended words. The corpse wedged against the far wall stared blankly at him, its glossy, glass-like eyes peering straight through every façade he’d ever worn.

He felt everything and nothing all at once; raw anguish that pulled a sob from his lips and red-hot anger that blurred his vision and sent his fist straight through the wall. He didn’t feel the scrape of plaster against his skin or the ache of bruised knuckles when he drew his trembling hand back against his stomach, only the hollowed-out numbness of stark disbelief. 

Sliding down the wall until his knees were tucked against his chest, he tucked the termination notice into his pocket, snug against the film he still carried. The second sheet of paper was a letter. From Helen. John’s heart fluttered at the sight of her neat cursive. It was the same neat cursive that he kept locked in a box under their bed, bearing their handwritten wedding vows. But there was a cold edge to the writing on the note, and reading it, John could hardly recognize it as the same script that had quoted Shakespeare on the night they married: _I’ll follow thee and make heaven of hell; to die upon the hand I loved so well._

It could’ve been yesterday or it could’ve been a lifetime ago. Happiness felt so far removed from whatever John felt as he stared at the letter that he could hardly believe he’d ever felt it at all.

_John, the new note began, short and concise._ Thomas turned himself in. They came for the girls. I told them to hide in the bedroom. The man I killed would’ve found them if I didn’t. We’re gone. Far away. This is how it has to be. I’m sorry. Helen.

He felt the weight of the world crushing down on his shoulders. He turned his attention again to the dead man, his stomach lurching at the thought that Helen was capable of murder. He supposed he’d always known that; she was a fierce, cigarette-smoking riveter in the days before the war, and he’d fallen in love with her spirit of rebellion just as he’d fallen in love with her pretty eyes and wise-crack mouth. 

But now, her words were accusatory, and even if they weren’t meant to be, he knew damn well it was his fault Thomas was dead. He’d gone off to Berlin, and if he hadn’t, he could’ve stopped them from taking him away. But he had gone, and in doing so, he’d killed happiness and sanctity and all that came with it.

Maybe Joe had been right. Maybe it was glory that he sought, after all.

And then he remembered his gun.

He’d dropped it by the bed when he’d found the note, and as he stared at its place on the ground, he felt a sense of misplaced reprieve. There was a way out. 

He reached for it, but before he could, a boot came down on top of it and John leapt back, startled and dazed. He hadn’t heard anyone enter, but next he knew, he was peering up at Erich Raeder.

“Sir,” He glanced at the cadaver, his cheeks losing their rosy flush. “We’ve received word of your return, and I’ve come to warn that--”

“Get out,” John rasped. “Get out of my fucking house, Erich.” 

Erich swallowed hard. “Sir, I implore you to listen--”

John pulled his knife from his boot and extended its blade out towards his aide.

“I said _get out_.”

It was too easy for Erich to snatch the blade from him; it felt almost as though John had let him take it. Perhaps he had, Erich mused, as he knew John wouldn’t hurt him, even in his maddened state. He plucked the gun up off the floor, too, tucking it away where his commander couldn’t reach it.

“There’s an Obergruppenführer in from Berlin. He’ll arrive within the hour to take you into custody.” 

“Why?” John asked blankly, as if he didn’t care much either way.

“He suspects you’ll know the whereabouts of your wife. She’s missed a hearing with Public Health.” 

John’s eyes glossed at the mention of Helen, and after a pause, he shook his head.

“I don’t know where she went,” He gestured towards the letter. “That’s how she wanted it.” His lips twitched into a miserable smile, and he laughed without humor. “Let them do as they wish. Let them kill me. I prefer it.” 

Erich sighed and rubbed tiredly at his throbbing temples.

"You don't mean that, sir." 

Another laugh, somehow even more tormented than the first. "Don't I?" 

“Did you kill that man?” Erich pointed, exasperated, to the corpse. 

“What’s it matter if I did or didn’t? He’s dead, regardless.” 

Erich stepped towards the body and crouched down, fumbling through the pockets of his uniform until he extracted ID papers, identifying him as Untersturmführer Charles Weber. His jacket held a wallet, a pack of Winstons, a receipt from a sleazy bar across town, but no gun. Erich stood, turning back towards John. “I don’t understand, sir.” 

John was silent. He stared at the floor, his eyes gleaming and unfocused. “There’s nothing to understand.” 

Erich knelt in front of him, taking a long, slow breath. He’d taken bullets for John before, and he’d take them again without hesitation. But the man could be difficult, and time was of the essence.

“Sir, I need you to understand that I’m committing treason by being here against direct orders. I’m trying to help you.” 

“Why?” 

Erich’s heart fluttered. He didn’t know why, in truth, but he did know that he’d never felt for anyone the way he felt for John. It was inappropriate and criminal, perhaps even perverted, but it was the strongest thing he’d ever felt, and he’d hold onto it until it was ripped from his cold, stiff hands on the eve of his death.

“Why, indeed.” He straightened up, smoothing out the creases in his overcoat. “If you’re killed, what does that accomplish?” 

John shook his head.

“I resent the notion that death is meant to accomplish anything. In death as in life, there is no inherent meaning,” His lips trembled, and he paused just long enough to collect himself as best he could. “Do you have a lighter?” 

Erich rummaged around in his pocket for a moment, eventually extracting a sliver Zippo and handing it over to John. He offered him a cigarette, but before he had the pack pulled from his trousers, John had set the piece of paper he’d been holding ablaze.

“What are you doing?” Erich reached for the lighter, but John clutched it closer to his chest and refused to lessen his hold. “What is--”

“I won’t incriminate Helen,” he muttered, watching despondently as the flames overtook his wife’s elegant, cursive twists. He had a plan. It might’ve been suicide, but it was a plan nonetheless. “Let the Obergruppenführer come, Erich,” His gaze flickered over to the dead man. “Justice, after all, is vital to the function of the _State._ ” He spat the word, bitter and vehement. For the first time, Erich wondered if grief really could drive a man wild. 

“After all you’ve accomplished in Berlin, sir…” 

“All I’ve accomplished is ending someone else’s war before it began,” John shook his head. “And in doing so, I’ve lost my own.” 

Erich sucked in a deep breath as John stomped out the remainder of his flame. It left scorch marks on the carpet, but all that stood in place of the letter were a few charred pieces of paper. Whatever John hoped to conceal, he’d certainly concealed.

“Permission to speak freely, sir?” 

John gave a dismissive wave, his eyes fixed on the bulge in Erich’s pocket where his confiscated gun sat. “Say whatever you like.” 

“I can’t understand your grief, because I’m not a father,” He began carefully, too aware of the fact that one verbal misstep could dismantle whatever chance he had at convincing John to flee. “But I understand loyalty, sir.” 

“You’re here against orders,” John interjected. “To whom does your loyalty belong, Sturmbannführer?” 

“You, sir,” Erich said without missing a beat. Something softened in John’s troubled expression, and for a moment, Erich felt like he was flying. “Is that not clear?” 

“It’s clear,” John muttered, defeated. “What do you suggest I do, Erich? I’m asking for your counsel.” 

“Speaking freely?” 

“Yes, please do.” 

“I think you should get the hell out of New York while you still can. If they can’t come for your wife and daughters, they’ll come for you. Publically. You’ll be bait, sir, for Helen to bite.” 

John looked taken aback, his lips parted in shock. Erich found it hard to believe that such a thought hadn’t occurred to him at least once, but then again, he wasn’t exactly himself.

“It’s rather unheard of for a man to tell his commanding officer to flee,” John leaned back against the wall. “I don’t want you incriminated because of me, Erich. You’ve got a future, here,” He swallowed hard. “I don’t.” 

“My future is mine to do with it as I please, sir,” Erich took hold of his arm and helped him up, steadying him once he got to his feet. “I’m perfectly aware of the implications my actions may or may not have.”

“You’re either a noble man or a fool,” John inhaled sharply. “I don’t know which.” 

“I’ll wear either title with pride, sir.”

Erich had already weighed the worst outcome against the best; the latter being that they both survive and the former, that they’re both found guilty of their respective sins and sentenced to a fate worse than death. But such a fate didn’t scare him in the same way that losing John did. How silly it was, he thought, to fear losing something he never had to begin with! But that was the nature of love, wasn’t it? Love was silly, sometimes foolish, sometimes noble. Whoever said it was better to have loved and lost than to never have love at all had clearly never felt anything half as strong as whatever it was that Erich felt when he looked John Smith. It was something he all but refused to lose.

“I have to report the murder,” Erich continued as he ushered John down the stairs. “But if anyone asks, there’s been no sign of you or Helen.”

John gave a stiff nod. He thought it was a bit strange how Erich barely reacted at the sight of a corpse. Surely he hadn’t expected it, but was it the nature of their world that left men so desensitized to death? Or simply the fact that he felt there were more pressing matters at hand? 

“Tell them I did it,” John demanded.

“Did you?” 

“Yes. And I’ll do it again. If that’s what it takes to punish those bastards for the death of my boy, I’ll kill every last one of them.”

Erich shook his head. 

“I don’t believe you, sir,” He glanced down at his watch. “Your arrival was reported by your driver barely twenty minutes ago. Hardly enough time to do all that.”

“It doesn’t take long to pull a trigger, Sturmbannführer.” 

“If that’s the case, why is there blood on the wall and carpet in the corridor as well?” 

John paused, brows furrowed in contemplation. He hadn’t thought of that. There were a lot of things that didn’t quite add up; how had Helen gone without her car? Who had ransacked the house? Why was there a trail of blood leading from the hall when it was clear the man had died in the bedroom? And the film in Berlin…who had sent it? Had they known Thomas would die? He hadn’t thought much of anything, aside from the fact that he’d never see his family again, but in his brief moment of lucidity, unease gnawed at his gut. 

“I don’t know,” He whispered, his shoulders tense. Erich gave his arm a reassuring pat.

“I figured as much, sir.” 

“I need to find Helen before anyone else does,” John looked at Erich, eyes pleading. “And the Man in the High Castle, too. And Juliana Crain.” 

Erich checked to make sure the streets were still vacant before leading John out to his car.

“Why them?” 

John pulled the film from his coat and handed it to Erich. His eyes widened in shock, and he quickly swatted the tape back out of sight.

“Where did you get something like that!? With the Führer dead, the films are being collected and destroyed. To possess one is a crime against the State.” 

“I know. But it came into my possession in Berlin. It was sent to me; I don’t know from whom. It shows…” John paused to let out a slow, shaky breath after his voice broke. “I’ll spare you what it shows, but all is not as it seems and I need to understand why. And how.” He held up the piece of brown paper bearing the Bible verse. “This came with it, too. Do you know what it means?” 

Erich squinted. “No, sir. It looks like it’s from scripture, though. Whomever sent you this is involved in something very dangerous and very illegal. I suggest staying far away from it. With all due respect, Obergruppenführer, you don’t need any more trouble than you’ve already got.” 

John peered ahead as Erich drove down an unfamiliar road. The trees had begun to change color and fall from their branches. John rolled down his window and sighed as the cool morning air tousled his hair. He always loved autumn most of all, but now, it only served to remind him that winter’s long, cold nights were just around the corner.

“Where are we headed, Erich?” 

“To my apartment. You can lie low there until this either blows over, or you’ve got what you need to leave.” 

John’s eyes narrowed. “They’ll kill you if anyone finds I’m there.” 

“Let me worry about me, sir.” 

“I don’t deserve your kindness, Erich. Or your mercy.” 

“If it was true that you didn’t deserve it, Obergruppenführer, then I assure you, you wouldn’t have it.”


	3. Hell is Empty...

“Gone!” spat Lawrence Klemm, throwing his hands into the air with a breath of defeat. “What do you mean, _gone_!?” 

Erich grit his teeth. “The meaning is rather straightforward, Major. Shall I define it, nonetheless?” 

Klemm’s eyes narrowed, and a vein pulsed at his temple. “Thirty minutes, Sturmbannführer. There were thirty minutes between the point at which Corporal Lange reported Obergruppenführer Smith’s return, and the point at which our men arrived at his residence. How far could he go – by foot, nevertheless – in such a short time?” 

Erich gave an innocent shrug.

“I’ve already reported all I know to be true: The house was vacant when I arrived, save the body of Charles Weber.” He paused, watching as Klemm puffed out a cloud of smoke, his cigarette smoldering between two fingers. “Surely you don’t believe the obergruppenfüher is a murderer?”

Klemm reached over Erich to retrieve a file from the desk. 

“The coroner put the time of death at about a day ago. Obergruppenführer Smith was still in Berlin.”

Erich felt relieved, though he didn’t know why. He never really believed John had killed Weber in the first place. It wasn’t that he doubted his capacity to kill; he was all too aware of the whispers wondering if Captain Connolly’s death really _was_ suicide, or if something else had transpired that day on the rooftop. But in fairness, Connolly had nearly killed them both not a week before his death, and no matter how hard Erich tried, he couldn't feel sympathy for the bastard. If he'd been the one left alone with him, he might’ve pushed him, too. 

But what had struck Erich about Weber’s death was the sheer desperation of it; it wasn’t premeditated, it wasn’t planned, and it wasn’t clean. If John had wanted him dead, he would’ve been found floating face-down in the Hudson river weeks after his inexplicable disappearance.

“Helen Smith, then?” He cleared his throat. “No doubt regarding the mandatory health screenings arranged for her daughters.” 

“It’s a lose-lose situation,” Klemm remarked bitterly. “You can hardly blame a mother for defending her children, but you can blame a woman for murdering an officer of the State.” 

“She’s probably long gone, Lawrence. Obergruppenführer Smith, too.” 

Klemm stuffed his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels, his half-smoked cigarette perched between his lips.

“We have our orders,” He mumbled. “Whatever we think of Smith as a man – as friend, even – doesn’t change the fact that he’s not only wanted for questioning. Now, he’s wanted in association with a murder.” 

Erich’s eyes narrowed. “He was in Berlin at the time, didn’t you say?” 

“Yes,” Klemm flipped through the file, pulling out a pale-yellow sheet bearing what looked like telephone records. “And he called Helen nine times in less than three hours, right around the time the coroner placed Weber’s death.” 

Erich took the file when Klemm extended it out to him, scanning the data with a surge of apprehension.

“That doesn’t mean he co-conspired to kill someone.” 

“Doesn’t it?” Klemm stubbed his cigarette out in the ash tray, a pensive look creeping onto his face. “Why else would he call home so often? Further, why would he disappear if he had nothing to hide?” 

Erich tossed the file back onto the desk. “Wouldn’t you call your wife if you were far from home?” 

Klemm snorted. “If I had a wife to call, maybe. But regardless, Raeder, you can’t let your heart dictate what your head knows to be right and wrong.” 

Erich tensed. “What do you mean by that?” 

“Simply that you and the obergruppenführer formed a bond on the day the car you were traveling in was targeted,” Klemm explained, looking only a little suspicious at Erich’s seemingly misplaced reaction. “You both sacrificed for the other, but times are changing, Erich. People sometimes change with them. You mustn’t let your loyalty to a man interrupt your duty to the State for which you both serve.” 

Before Erich could muster up any kind of coherent reply – a defense, most likely – Obergruppenführer Keller strode into the room. The pair of them straightened up and stuck their arms out at attention, stiff under the weight of the German’s harsh stare.

“A man is dead,” He growled, snatching the folder from its place on the desk. “And those who had a hand in his death are nowhere to be found.” 

“Sir—” Erich began, but when Keller lifted a hand to silence him, he dropped his stare to the floor. 

“It’s a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde!” He huffed. “Either something snapped inside Smith’s head in Berlin and he’s lost his mind, or his bitch of a wife has dragged him into something lethal.” 

In his pocket, Erich’s hand clenched into a fist. The rage he felt was empathetic and insurgent; He imagined that John would rip the man’s throat out if he’d been there to hear him speak of crassly of Helen. 

“If I may, sir,” Klemm tried, and when Erich glanced at him through his peripheral, he swore he saw a twitch of anxiety against his tight-set jaw. “We haven’t any proof that Helen Smith killed Charles Weber. For all we know, she could very well be a victim herself.” 

Erich stifled a wave of admiration. It was a lie, whether Klemm knew it or not, but it was a clever lie, nonetheless. Erich remembered the stench of burning paper as it mingled with the still stagnation of dusty air, and he knew without a shadow of doubt that the letter John had destroyed contained in it evidence that Helen was, in fact, the killer they sought. But he hadn’t considered the alternative approach, the flip-side theory that she, too, was a victim of horrid coincidence.

Keller considered this, but Erich noted a twinkle of skepticism glistening behind his gold-frame glasses.

“Limitless possibilities, no doubt,” He remarked. “And that’s why it’s so imperative that we contact Obergruppenführer Smith. I fear he knows more than we might expect. I find it hard to believe a man could go from glory to vice in so short a time, but we mustn’t rule out treason. We mustn’t rule out anything until we can say for certain which is true and which is not.” 

Klemm nodded firmly. “Yes, sir.” 

“We’ve set up patrols,” Keller continued. “At all borders, of course, and around the city, as well. No one moves without us knowing it.” His stare fell to Erich, whose tense shoulders shrugged in an attempt at innocence. 

“Common sense to do so, sir.” 

“Glad you approve,” Keller ridiculed. “I want him found. Alive, preferably. Helen Smith, too.”

Erich and Klemm saluted, and it took Erich all he had to keep the tremble from his arm. The reality of what he’d done was beginning to dawn. Keller’s eyes, yellowed and bloodshot with the alcohol in his breath, burned holes through Erich’s ever-loyal façade, and for the first time, he saw beyond his own immediate gratification, and the potential for consequence felt grave. And yet strangely, he couldn’t bring himself to regret a minute of it.

He followed Klemm out into the corridor, wordless and tense.

“What do you make of him, Raeder?” Klemm whispered, nodding back towards the now-closed office door. “Obergruppenführer Keller, I mean.” 

Erich shrugged. His mother had taught him the merit of keeping himself quiet when he had nothing good to say.

“I think he’s a wise man,” Klemm continued. “There’s a lot of talk among the guardsmen; they say he’s a decorated war hero of the European theatre. A personal friend of the late Führer, too.” His voice dropped and he leaned in close. “There’s talk of Smith, too. That he’s known his son was ill and acted against better judgement to keep his condition out of the public eye--”

“Aren’t you a little old for gossip?” Erich hissed. “School yard nonsense, Lawrence. After all that Obergruppenführer Smith has accomplished, you see it fit to question his allegiance?” 

“Consider Heydrich,” Klemm shook his head. “The man was the face of Aryan success, having led us to victory time and time again. And now, he’s dead. At your hand, too, if the _gossip_ is accurate.” 

Erich’s eyes fluttered shut at the memory of a resounding echo, the almost-sickening sound of blood and brains splattering against the far wall. It was the first time he’d taken a life, human or otherwise; he was too young to serve in the war when it came around, and too soft for the hunting games that half-defined the Hitler Youth.

His uncle – his namesake – an illustrious Navy man with more medals on his breast than hairs on his head, had called his reluctance to shoot a stag a flaw of character when he, barely ten, turned his rifle to the sky and scared the creature into hiding instead. And when, under John’s watchful eye, he pulled the trigger and sent Reinhard Heydrich straight to Hell, he’d thought of the beady-eyed stag and his ruddy-faced uncle, and he wondered just how things had changed so much.

“That’s different,” He grit.

“I don’t see how.” 

“Clearly.” 

Klemm huffed and crossed his arms, his dislike for his commensurate all too clear.

“I’ll update you if there’s word on the obergruppenführer’s location,” He cleared his throat and reached for another cigarette. 

“And I, you,” Erich replied, his smile as sweet as it was synthetic. He extended his hand out to Klemm, a gesture of formality and, if he allowed it, smug self-regard. Klemm’s lips curved around his cigarette into an arrogant grin, and unable to let himself be bested by the character of someone like Erich Raeder, he grasped his hand and gave it a firm shake.

***  
John paced.

As it turned, his aide was nothing if not premeditative and thorough. 

There wasn’t a single gun in his entire flat, and every kitchen utensil sharp enough to dig into his wrists had conveniently vanished. There were no rafters from which he could hang his belt, and the most toxic thing he could find for consumption’s sake was a bottle of expired Diet Coke. The doors were locked from the outside, and Erich, vigilant as ever, hadn’t left him a key. He tried the windows and groaned when he found that they barely opened enough to allow in a wisp of cool air, let alone enough to let anything out. 

And so he’d resolved to pacing the hallway and eyeing the black-and-white photographs that hung on either side of the wall. There was a blonde man in many that John assumed could only be Erich’s German father – they had the same thoughtful eyes and broad-shouldered frame, and the soft-faced brunette standing by his side bore a striking resemblance to the woman John knew as the late Emma Raeder.

It was strange, he thought, how Erich never mentioned that he had a sister.

It was strange, too, how it felt to catch a glimpse into the man’s private life. He knew him only as his loyal Sturmbannführer, his reserved, faithful assistant. But the photographs revealed a son, a brother, a human, for God’s sake, and there was something tragic about the way he smiled; toothy, wide, and naïve. It was a smile that didn’t yet know gunfire and the toils of war, or the way it felt to lose something dear. The thought of loss and all its poignancy churned John’s stomach, and tears prickled in his eyes.

He wiped them away and let out a slow breath, his cheeks flushing red at the thought of letting his composure slip. It didn’t matter that he was alone; the walls might as well have been watching. 

Cursing Erich and his forethought to suicide-proof his entire fucking house, John returned to the parlor and sat down on the couch. The room was immaculate; surely he’d expected nothing less, all things considered. He reached over and flicked on the news, thinking briefly of Henry Collins and the fugitive that killed him live on-air. Where he should’ve felt rage, or grief, or guilt, he felt a cold and steel-like numb.

“In the days since our great Führer’s death,” ranted the new anchorman, young and blonde and zealous. “Insurgence has been on the rise. Just today, a Semitic terrorist claimed the lives of twelve just south of Portsmouth when his car barreled through a crowd gathering at His National Church, where an assembly commemorating the Führer’s life was to be held.”

John’s eyes narrowed. An idea was beginning to form in the back of his head. It was a horrid, twisted idea, worse than taking the film into his room and breaking into the theatre in Berlin combined.

“Such assemblies are to be held around our nation today, but we should not allow the potential of threat to overshadow our tribute to the man who redefined greatness,” the newscast continued. “The Reichsminister has promised added SS security to ensure the safety of all who wish to participate. At Manhattan’s own National Church, a vigil is to be held tonight at dusk. All are encouraged to attend with pride and without fear. Our homeland is as safe, strong, and united as ever. Seig heil!” 

Lies, John thought bitterly. All lies. He’d left a safe country, cozy with the warmth of family. But the country he’d returned to was a foreign land, and everything was different and new and horrid. The streets had eyes and the walls had ears, and no matter where he went, he’d go as an immigrant outsider in the land of his birth. 

_United my ass._

He stood, switching of the TV set. Moving towards the window, he pulled back one sealed blind and peered into the sunlight, resenting the normalcy of life outside. Men in their business suits walked dogs by the park, and women in pale-blue A-line dresses pushed strollers, crunching fallen leaves beneath their wheels.

Grief had turned to fury. John resented it all; the bright glow of morning sun, the bloom of autumn’s flora, the hiss of cars on the roads and the song of birds in the changing trees. He resented himself, and he resented Adolf Hitler and he resented the stagnation of everything as it all stood still. He couldn’t run, because he’d be found, and if he was found, they’d go after Helen, too. He couldn’t hide, because he’d never hid from anything in all his years; not the draft notice when it came by mail, not the gunfire when it blitzed his unit, and certainly, not the prospect of death at the hands of the same dirty bastards that killed his son.

He knew what he had to do.


	4. ...and the Devils are Here.

Erich returned home to the sound of silence buzzing through the flat. Anxiety crept in; silence had always felt just a little uncanny. Ever since his mother died and the music she loved so fondly stopped, he always kept the television on for sound. He couldn’t yet bring himself to play her records. They reminded him too much of a distant past that was beginning to feel like a distance life.

“Sir?” Erich set his bag down on the kitchen table and shrugged off his coat, draping it over the back of a chair. No reply came. He poked his head into the kitchen, the parlor, and then the bedroom, and nowhere could he find any sign of John Smith.

He rounded the corner and cursed at the broken window in the bathroom.

In truth, he should’ve known better than to think he could contain the obergruppenführer, if he didn’t wish to be contained. Cleverness didn’t mix well with heartbreak; cleverness could think its way out of a room with no exits, and heartbreak could act upon the things that cleverness would never otherwise do. Just as he turned, torn between rushing out of the house in search or waiting back and hoping for the best, there was a knock at his door.

His blood curdled.

All too conscious of the pressure his gun put against his hip, he pulled open the door and breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of his neighbor. He’d never been so delighted to see a man he hadn’t ever really cared for.

“Ralph,” He greeted with a forced smile. “Is everything alright?” 

Ralph glanced around, his patchy moustache twitching as he searched for the right words.

“Have you got security cameras, Erich?” 

Erich tensed. His smile strained.

“I do, but I fear they haven’t been working properly as of late. I’ve deactivated them out of sheer frustration.” A pause, to solidify a clever lie. “Why, might I ask?” 

“It’s my car,” Ralph groaned. “Somebody took it, right out from my driveway! A Semite, I’d bet. Half this city’s infested with dirty Jews, commies, and faggots.” 

Erich did his best not to wince. He was reminded once again of why, exactly, he never really liked Ralph Owens.

“You sure you didn’t just…park it up the street?” Erich lifted a skeptical brow. Ralph was always looking for a reason to stir trouble, and in his alcohol-flooded head, he’d convinced himself that trouble was out to find him, too.

“Did you hear?” Ralph went on, ignoring Erich’s backhand retort. “I’d assume you would, being the nature of your work, and all, but the Semite that drove his car into the crowd in Portsmouth? He killed twelve people and hurt another twenty real bad.” 

“Tragic, Ralph,” Erich remarked. Something felt off, though he couldn’t quite place what it was. “I’m sure the SS is looking into it.” 

“They’re having a vigil here, tonight. I was hoping on going, you know. Pay my respects. Hitler was a good man; he built this country, you know. He fixed it. Delivered it from decadence. But with my car being gone, now, I have to wait to file a report!” 

Erich had stopped listening. Somehow, something clicked and it all made a tragic amount of sense. 

_I’ll kill every last one of them._ John’s words – words that he’d perhaps mistaken for the ramblings of a broken heart – came back with startling clarity. 

He wouldn’t, Erich thought. Would he? Would he damn himself like that? His legacy, his reputation, all he’s made for himself in New York, all gone in the name of revenge? Could the calculating, ever-steady John Smith that Erich had fallen deeply, hopelessly, irrevocably in love with, be capable of such disregard? 

The fact that Erich had all of his cooking knives and hunting guns stashing in the trunk of his car didn’t offer him a promising answer.

“I’ll drive you,” Erich rushed back inside for his coat, returning with his keys. “I need to be there, anyway. And I’ll deal personally with your missing vehicle.” 

Ralph blinked. “If it isn’t too much trouble…” 

“Not at all,” Erich ushered him towards his car. “As I said, I have to be there, anyway.” 

If enduring fifteen minutes of Ralph’s conspiracy theories and rants – aliens killing the Führer, Jews controlling the banks, and whatnot – was the price Erich had to pay to keep John from doing something awful, he’d do it ten times over.

***

_The croaking raven doth bellow for revenge._

John had always loved Shakespeare, yet in the naivety of his youth, he’d found Hamlet to be insolent, impulsive, and cruel. How strange was it, then, that as he grew older and, he hoped, wiser, he understood the rage that could propel a boy to kill? Bitterly ironic, he thought. With age, comes anger? No; with age, comes an anguish that knows no name. 

He clicked on the radio. Hoagie Carmichael. Heart and Soul.

_Heart and soul, I fell in love with you. Heart and soul, the way a fool would do: Madly._

John was sure, then, that the universe had conspired against him all along, that the stars had aligned to bring him there on an empty road, in a stranger’s stolen car at the break of dusk.

He and Helen had danced to Heart and Soul on the day they wed – it wasn’t formal; just the pair of them and her father’s record player and the light of a half-full moon. And in that moment, with nothing in between them but an inch or so of summer air tainted with the scent of lilacs in bloom, John knew for the first time what it meant to be happy. 

He would’ve killed to travel back to the days before the world as he knew it had ended, back to the days of lavender fields and honeysuckle. He’d shake some sense into the hot-headed nineteen-year-old soldier that thought maybe, just maybe, life under the regime wouldn’t be so bad. Was he an optimist or a fool? Perhaps a bit of both. But just as Hamlet’s death came to him at the tip of a poisoned blade, John’s own death would come in the heat of an impassioned reprisal. He drank his own poison seventeen years ago, and it had tasted sweet, like the promise of Eden. But all that glitters, he’d learned, is hardly gold.

Up ahead, he could see a steeple coming into view. The Church was outlined in twilight's cobalt glow, and a sheet of black draped over every window. A swastika, offset in white against an inky banner, billowed like a flag in the wind. 

He’d been half-wrong, he realized, when back at his house he’d told Erich the death has no innate meaning. Death, like life, meant whatever one made it mean, and John was going to die bearing in mind that he’d go down in history not as the man who fell from glory and grace, but as the man who got even.

He pulled the car up in between two Voltzwagon Beetles and stepped out, leaving the key snugly in the ignition. The lot was still and the sky was gentle. Across from the church, there was an idyllic little section of Central Park, complete with a hand-carved bench and a stream babbling beneath the footbridge that led into a grove of trees. It was a space John might’ve come to relax a lifetime ago, but all he could think of is how it would look on the news when they reported what he’d done. If they even reported it at all.

Dully aware of music humming from the chapel, he glanced down at his watch. 

_How long until they leave?_

It wasn’t enough to drive the car into the church, and it wasn’t enough to crash it in the lot just to prove a point. He wanted real damage done; retaliation, an eye for eye, but rather a life for ten. Or twelve. Or more. He would leave a scar on the society that made him a God and then crucified his son, that built him up to the heavens just to put him through hell. 

Sighing softly to himself, he paced around the vehicle and popped the trunk. There was little to work with; an old rope, a toolbox, a pint of gasoline, and a stack of old Playboys. He scoffed at the latter, and if he’d had any regret regarding his not-so-petty theft, it was gone at the sight of the pile.

But the gas? The rope? Eyes narrowing in thought, John lifted the container and gave it a light shake. Petrol swashed around in it, and the rope, with its loose-ends and dry strands, reminded him of the fireworks he’d helped Jennifer let off only weeks ago on VA Day.

And just like that, his plans reformed. 

He crouched down, out of sight of the cars passing by on the adjacent freeway. When he reached into his pocket, he expected the book of matches he usually kept tucked behind his cigarettes. But instead, he was met with a cold, heavy weight, and curiously, he extracted Erich’s Zippo. He’d forgotten about it; it hadn’t been his intention to steal the thing when he’d neglected to give it back. It felt wrong to commit crime with something belonging to the only man left on the face of the Earth he didn’t hate beyond reason. Had he been in a state of clarity rather than one of foggy vengeance, that might’ve been enough of a divine sign to stop him. But his mind was made. Nothing could change it.

He burned a strand of rope free from the rest and dipped it in the petrol, letting it soak for a few seconds before pulling it back out. There was activity behind the sheathed windows. Something tossed in his stomach, and it almost felt like excitement. 

The long end of the rope found its placed tucked in the gas tank, leaving a short, stout stub jutting out. It waited there to be met again with the lighter’s twitching flame, and after that, John estimated fifteen seconds. Maybe twenty. And then the weight of the world would be lifted from his shoulders and finally he’d find himself in a state of lasting sleep. 

If there was a Heaven caught someplace between the clouds, he knew his invitation had long since been rescinded. And if Hell really existed beneath Manhattan’s rotten sewers, he figured there was nothing the Devil could do that hadn’t already been to him on Earth. He wasn’t afraid of death, or, in fact, of dying. He was only afraid of the moments in between; the familiar stillness to the park across the way, the gentle tousle of evening’s crisp breeze. He feared his own resolve. Or, rather, he feared that he’d develop a stark lack thereof at the last moment. And then what he’d said would be made true: Death is meaningless, and life, without worth.

He’d been staring at his shoes so long that he startled when a man cleared his throat. John looked up, and at the car beside his, a familiar face offered a smile. He recognized him from around the Headquarters. He was no one important enough to fear, but with a tough swallow, John wondered if he might’ve phoned someone that was.

“Obergruppenführer,” He greeted, extending his hand out to shake. John took it and smiled warmly.

“Oberjunker Davies, is it?” 

The young man nodded. Had they met under different circumstances, he might’ve looked delighted that John had remembered his name. But instead, his eyes held only skepticism.

“I’ve heard that it would be in good interest for you to report to acting Obergruppenführer Keller, sir,” Davies cleared his throat. 

John waved his hand dismissively through the air and laughed.

“I commend you on your service, Oberjunker, but I’ve already spoken with him. Whatever you might’ve heard was little more than an unfortunate misunderstanding.” 

It was a surprisingly easy part to play. He’d always been an adept storyteller, and lying had never struck him as a terribly criminal thing to do.

“I’ve spoken with Major Klemm just this morning…” 

“And I, minutes ago,” John chuckled. “Why else would I have missed the memorial, had it not been a conversation of the utmost importance? It was nice, I trust? The memorial?” 

Davies nodded. “Yes, sir. Very poignant. The world has changed a great deal in a very short time.” 

“As it always does,” John’s sideways smile returned. “Someday, we’ll look back and see how fortunate we were to live in a time that saw such change. The only thing worse, you know, is indolence. Inertia. Stagnation.” 

Davies eyed him as if he didn’t know what to think, and without another word, he turned on his heels and stalked back towards the church. John thought he was safe, but the moment he saw Lawrence Klemm emerge from the steps, men swarming around him and gesturing in his general direction, he knew then that he’d been caught in his lie. He was cornered. And so, behind his back he lit the fuse. In the very same moment, Erich appeared out of what seemed like thin air, his hand tightening around John’s wrist. 

“Sir,” He spoke through grit teeth. “I fear you’ve been spotted.” 

“Erich?” John gaped, hit with a sudden surge of panic. He shoved him away from the danger he hadn’t yet noticed, already resolved to the fact that he wouldn’t let him die. Not after he’d taken a bullet to his heart because of him, not after he’d risked his life and legacy sneaking John away from the body Helen had put in their bedroom. If anyone in the world deserved to see tomorrow, it was Erich Raeder. “You need to leave. Now.” 

Erich shook his head. “We need a plan.” 

“A plan!?” John cried. “There’s no time for a plan, Erich, the car is going to explode!” 

Erich’s jaw dropped. “Excuse me?” 

John took hold of Erich’s arm and pulled him away, shoving him down into the stream. A few inches of water, no more than three, broke his fall, but the next thing John knew, the bank had given out beneath his feet and he tumbled down on top of him. 

He felt it before he heard it; a low, earthy rumble that sent ripples through the water and quieted the distant conversation. Everything happened all at once: There was a rush of heat against his back and a detonation that made his ears ring. A pause. Another explosion. He felt it in his gut. Someone screamed. John shut his eyes. Another. And another. And another. The cars on either side of his had taken fire and turned into weapons of their own, and from there, it was the domino effect – a consequence he’d neglected to consider. One bomb became three. Three became five. Five became seven, and seven became nine. It seemed painstakingly obvious now that such a thing would happen, but at the time he’d thought his plan was the best he’d ever had. Like all bad ideas, it had seemed so foolproof at first. Like communism, it had seemed ideologically sound, but the unpredictability and frank negligence on his part had escalated things beyond what he’d ever dreamed. 

Yes, he’d wanted destruction. But instead, he’d gotten devastation. And death, its seemed, had left him behind.

When silence finally settled, it wasn’t really silent at all. Car alarms shrieked and sirens wailed, and if John strained to listen through the pulse of his heart in his ears, he could hear cries of the injured rising above all else. 

Erich let out a breath he’d held until the noise was done. “Jesus Christ.”

“Are you alright?” John pulled himself off of Erich with a reluctance that surprised even him. He knelt in the creak, the full moon to his back and the ruin he’d wrought staring him down like a predator unto prey.

“John,” Erich whispered, sitting up with his fingers still tight in their hold on his wrist. “What have you done?” 

The parking lot was a battle field, except it bore no victors. Blood stained the pavement and plumes of black smoke blotted out streetlights and stars alike. Flames spat out from beneath torched metal, and bodies laid, misshapen and motionless, at the core of it all.

_What have you done?_

In the shadows of the blaze's auburn spark, a shape began to take form. Erich stood, pulling John up with him.

“We need to leave,” He insisted. “Now.” 

“We?” John gaped at him, disbelieving. “If you leave with me you’ll be damned.” 

“I know. Let’s go.” 

Only then did John recognize the man approaching them as Major Lawrence Klemm. His hand was coiled around the clear curve of a gun. A trickle of blood parted the dirt that stained his cheeks. John was frozen, perhaps with shock or fear or madness of some dreadful combination of the three.

Klemm had the shot. He could’ve taken it. He could’ve been hailed as the hero that killed the terrorist that fell from grace and never really got even. But his eyes, red-rimmed and sunken with grief, shifted from John to Erich, and something in his expression changed.

They held each other’s stares for a lengthy while, and then Klemm offered a brisk nod.

“Let’s go,” Erich repeated, pulling John along only half-against his will. He didn’t understand what had happened, let alone why, but the sun had fallen, and under the cover of night, they slipped away.


	5. Runaways

Joe dreamt of Canon City. 

There were more stars then there were people in New York, and as the sun rose, casting the land from shadows, they were lost to the glow of morning’s fair light. He’d say he’d never seen anything like it, but that wasn’t true; he’d seen Juliana Crain, and her radiance put even the sun to shame.

He hadn’t really thought of why they called it falling in love until he’d met her, but the moment he did, it made all the sense in the world. Love’s tiny moments – dimly lit diners and dusty motel beds – ripped the ground out from under him and suddenly he _was_ falling. Nothing felt real, but it didn’t feel quite so artificial, either. It felt like Berlin, with the haze of intoxicated despondence and the smell of liquor on a ghost’s breath.

He’d give anything to stay there, suspended in hopeless wonder, but reality promised no such solace.

Thumping against the front door drew him from his sleep. With a groan, he rolled over and glared at his clock. 11:17 p.m. glared back in bold-faced red. 

_What the fuck?_

Another knock. Joe pulled himself free of his blanket’s warmth and retrieved his gun from the drawer of his desk. Every possibility went through his mind at once, and none of them were good. He couldn’t fathom a good reason for a visitor so close to midnight. Maybe the S.S. had changed their minds about releasing him. Maybe they’d come to take him back to Berlin to die alongside his father, who, until days ago, he hadn’t given a damn about. Tightening his grip on his gun, he yanked open the door.

Erich Raeder looked stunned, staring down the barrel of a .45. He threw his hands up in defense and gasped out through labored breaths, “Joe, we’re on the same side.” 

Behind him, John stood in a daze. The rain dripping from his hair didn’t seem to bother him, and as far as Joe could tell, he wasn’t fazed by the gun in his fist, either. His chest rose and fell rapidly, as if he’d been running away from something dire. But running away hardly seemed like the kind of thing John would do. 

“How the hell did you find me?” Joe tucked his gun into his waistband and ushered them inside. 

“I called the operator, it isn’t rocket science,” Erich dead-bolted the door once they were in, moving to close the windows and shut the blinds. “Have you seen the news?” 

“Do you mind telling me what’s going on?” Joe grabbed his arm and held him in place, his eyes narrowing with skepticism. “You two look like you’re in some trouble.” 

“Trouble is putting it lightly,” John muttered, leaning back against the door and sliding down to sit. Tiredly, he rubbed at his eyes and let out a slow, shaky breath. “Joe, I offered you a deal in Berlin. I think we need to…renegotiate.” 

“A deal?” Joe spat, incredulous. “You told me Juliana Crain was living in New York, and she isn’t. You lied. Again. There’s no room to negotiate anything.” 

“She’s living under the alias of Julia Mills, and she’s missing, Intelligence thinks the Neutral Zone, but Joe, listen--”

Erich had switched on the television, staring with a look of dismal anxiety at the sight of the scene John had caused. 

“—death toll rises to eighty-four, nearly seven times higher than the earlier incident in Portsmouth. It is believed that this is a matter of high treason; in the wake of our glorious Führer’s death, we are once again reminded of the man who held our nation together in times of peril.” 

A pause. No one dared to breathe, let alone speak. 

“The Reichminister is offering 50,000 marks in exchange for information leading to Obergruppenführer John Smith’s arrest. He is wanted on charges of treason, terrorism, and defection. In addition to compensation, amnesty shall be granted to any and all undesirables, regardless of ethnic or genetic background, that have a hand in his detention.”

Erich turned it off, unable to bear it any longer. He imagined that every pair of eyes in the Reich was locked on the screen, and it felt like all those eyes were watching him, too. His mother, rest her soul, would've wept. His long-dead father, though, whose fair eyes and scruffy chin he couldn't pick from a crowd, might've understood. He'd left Germany, the land of his birth, to follow the woman he'd loved across the sea to a strange, foreign land marked by a statue holding a torch to the heavens. And when Erich had taken John's hand and ran away from any chance at normalcy, any chance at the righteousness his namesake had promised, he thought of Johann Raeder and his old adage: _Whatever is done for love is done beyond good and evil._

“You did this?” Joe gaped, turning his attention to the spot on the floor where John sat, his breath faltering under the weight of the accusation. 

“Fifty-thousand marks,” Erich whispered in plain disbelief, his stare shifting immediately to John. “We need to leave New York, Joe. Do you have any connections that could help us do that?” 

“Connections?” Joe blinked, dazed. “What the hell kind of connections do you think I’d have? What’s stopping me from calling the SS right now and collecting?” 

Erich shook his head. “Surely, you know there’s nothing to collect! It’s a ruse; if a Jew sets foot over that border, it doesn’t matter if they have our heads in their hands. They’ll be killed, too. Deception for unity’s sake is still deception.” 

Joe lit a cigarette and sighed, sitting down on his couch and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. 

“Try telling that to the poor bastards in the Neutral Zone that are fixing to slit your throats.” 

“The Neutral Zone,” John looked up, as if struck but a sudden and inexplicable realization. “Helen may be there. We discussed it; taking Thomas there, instead.” 

Erich sat down beside him on the floor and nodded after a moment’s contemplation. 

“She could be anywhere.” 

“They won’t let her on a plane. And the Pacific States would extradite her back to the Reich almost immediately; what does she have that would be of interest to the Japanese?” 

“Information,” Joe said. “About you. Can you imagine if the Japanese government hand-delivers the Reich’s most wanted terrorist? It would stabilize relations and give the Japs leverage. The Nazis want to attack or expand their borders? Impose sanctions to keep them in their place? The Japs say, _Remember when we sent you Smith? You owe us!_ ” 

John looked tortured, with his red-rimmed eyes and trembling lips.

“She wouldn’t do that.” 

Joe cocked his head to the side and fought back a contemptable smile. He was in a place that allowed his cruelty, and if anyone deserved it, it was Smith. The man that lied to him, that used him, that broke his heart with the words _she’s dead_ , was at his mercy. He could break him, as he’d dreamt of breaking him, and it was that mindset – be it vengeful or righteous – that shrugged his shoulders and pulled from his lips an offhand, “Wouldn’t she?”

“No,” John murmured, shaking his head. His eyes glossed and his voice broke, and Erich’s stare seemed to harden as he shot Joe a warning glance.

“You sure?” Joe stood and crossed the floor, ignoring Raeder’s nonverbal caveat and crouching down before John. He’d heard about Thomas. Word spread like sickness in suburbia, where there was little else to do but talk. He didn’t deserve what happened to him. But it happened, because John didn’t have the balls to prevent it until it was too late. No amount of car bombs could change the fact that he was the worst kind of coward. “You ran off to build your legacy while the men in white coats came by and killed your kid. Do you really think she’ll ever forgive you for that?” 

“Joe,” Erich cautioned, placing a hand over John’s arm. “Stop.” 

“Wherever she is, do you think she’s seen the news? Do you think your little girls know what Papa did? Do you think--”

There was a scuffle of motion, and then John’s hands were wrapped around Joe’s throat. He forced him back against the floor and tightened his hold, tears sliding down his cheeks as he hissed out a string of half-incomprehensible indecencies.

His face blurred in and out of focus as Joe’s fingers fought to pry his away, but there was something animal about John’s grip, something desperate and frantic and deadly. Joe could’ve easily taken him in Berlin, when he’d snuck up on his grief and caught his wrath off guard. But he’d provoked something he hadn’t anticipated. He’d stirred the frenzy of a man with nothing to lose and even less to gain.

As suddenly as it had come, the pressure was gone. Joe opened his eyes – he didn’t remember closing them, curiously – just in time to see Erich yank John back into an embrace meant to restrain. John froze, wide-eyed and stunned. He looked over at Joe and his expression softened, shifting from anguish to disbelief. 

“Are you alright?” Erich lessened his grasp ever so slightly, placing his hand over John’s own and silently assessing the likelihood of another outburst. John settled back into his seat against the wall, drew a quivering breath, and offered an unsteady nod. 

"I'm fine, thanks," Joe hissed, sucking in one gulp after another.

Erich stood, smoothing out his shirt. He eyed Joe with a glare that might as well have said _you deserved that. In fact, you deserved more than that._

“Forget it,” he hissed instead. “We’ll figure it out ourselves.” 

Joe wanted them to leave and be done with the whole thing, but part of him knew they wouldn’t survive the night. Part of him cared, too, whether they lived or died, though he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why. And then it dawned, like the break of day: Juliana Crain. 

What would she want him to do? What had she done, when he’d been the hunted in the crosshairs of the Resistance? She’d led him to safety, to a boat bound for home, and she never stopped once to ask whether or not he’d do the same for her. 

“Wait,” He sighed, turning Erich’s head just as he neared the door. With a defeated shrug, Joe grabbed his car keys. “I can get you Upstate, out of the city’s eye. But we can’t take the Autobahn, because they’ll be watching it, and once we get there, we have to find another way to the Neutral Zone. There’s no way we’ll get over the border in a car.” 

Erich smiled with a peculiar combination of victory and relief.

“Thank you, Joe,” Erich reached out to shake his hand, but Joe only stared at his fingers until he awkwardly tucked them back into his pocket. “I want to let you know, though, that it might be dangerous.” 

“Really?” Joe feigned surprise. “Smuggling a bomber and his sidekick across the border is dangerous? I had no idea.” 

Erich kept himself quiet. Joe was sacrificing a great deal in helping them, and if wise remarks and occasional cruelty were all he had to deal with, it might’ve just been worth it in the end. He thought about his neighbor, the crass and closed-minded Ralph Owens, and how his body was probably lying among the rubble of the Church's shattered windows. He swallowed and tried in vain not to blame himself.

John was right when he’d said Joe would be of great assistance, which, of course, begged more questions than it answered. Considering the fact that he narrowly stopped John from crushing his windpipe and Joe seemed determined to wound him even deeper, they didn’t seem exactly as he’d expected they would be.

“You both gotta lose the uniforms, though,” Joe remarked, shrugging his own chestnut wind-breaker on over his T-shirt. “You’re hardly inconspicuous.” He disappeared into his bedroom, leaving Erich and John standing in the foyer.

With what Erich thought might’ve been reluctance, John slid his coat from his shoulders and rummaged through the pockets. A film. A letter from Public Health. A wallet, with fifty marks and a picture of what he’d lost. A half-empty pack of cigarettes and a sleek, silver Zippo lighter. 

He held it out to Erich, apologetic.

Erich almost smiled. He closed John’s fingers around it and pushed his hand back towards his chest.

“It’s okay,” He assured. “Hold onto it, if you’d like.” 

Joe returned, tossing a pile of clothes at them.

“Hope they fit. That’s all we’ve got.” 

Joe wasn’t the best at coordinating colors, but somehow, the contrast of a green-and-black plaid flannel against a mahogany sweater suited John’s unconventional prettiness, and Erich had to look away before his cheeks had the chance to flush. He pulled his own sweater -- storm-cloud grey and half-threadbare -- over his head and fastened the black bomber coat over top of it. He looked up to meet John's wide-eyed expression, and realized only then that he must've snuck a glimpse at the crater-like scars, discolored and jagged, that marked where a bullet had struck him. John looked away almost at the exact moment Erich caught him staring, and for comfort's sake, Erich pretended he hadn't noticed.

Joe, satisfied with his work and oblivious to the wordless exchange between the pair, collected his things and pushed past them towards the door.

“Get in the back seat and keep your heads low,” He slipped into his car and flicked on the windshield wipers. The rain was picking up. In the distance, thunder grumbled with the promise of summer’s last squall before the chill of autumn set in. Joe rummaged through the glovebox in search of a map, and when he found it, he tossed it back to Erich. 

“Where to?” 

“There are train tracks outside of Buffalo,” Erich unfolded the map and traced his prospective route with his index finger. “Trains carry auto parts and other goods manufactured in New York to the outer reaches of the Reich – Kansas, Nebraska, Montana, and Utah, mainly. The station in Montana is in Great Falls – ninety miles east of the border in Helena.” 

“So we hope a train car and ride it out?” Joe laughed at the absurdity of it all. “Forget the car at the tracks, huh?” 

“Would you rather have Juliana Crain or a car?” John spoke up for the first time in what felt like too long. Erich glanced sideways at him, his expression torn between sympathy and hesitation.

“You fuck off about Juliana, alright?” Joe’s eyes narrowed in the rear-view mirror. “I could drive us right to the damn Headquarters and you’d be shot on the spot.” 

“In doing so, Joe, you’d do me no disservice.” 

“Enough,” Erich cleared his throat. “Joe is helping us a great deal, sir. We mustn’t underestimate the gravity of the sacrifice he’s made.” 

John crossed his arms and glared out at the city lights passing by in the distance, like far-off fireflies. Sacrifice? He could’ve laughed, had it not hurt so badly to breathe. He wanted to say that Joe knew nothing of sacrifice, that Juliana Crain had been little more than a blip on his radar and if he thought that was loss, he really was as naïve as he looked. But Erich delivered him a warning glance, as if he could sense the venom on his tongue before he even dared to speak it. He doubted that Joe would incriminate them, and therefore lose the chance of tracking his so-called love across the country, but he didn’t dare risk it. Had it been his own life at stake, it might’ve been different. But it wasn’t. It was Erich’s, too. And he wouldn’t dare threaten that.

And so he kept his mouth shut, watching out his window as the familiar become foreign.


	6. A Stranger Truth

Obergruppenführer Keller’s hand came down hard against his desk, sending stacks of papers fluttering gracelessly towards the floor.

“You had the shot,” He growled, and with four words, he managed to make Lawrence Klemm feel two inches tall. “Surveillance shows that you had the shot, Klemm. Why didn’t you take it!?” 

His breath caught in his throat. 

The truth was that he didn’t _know_. There was something to the way Raeder had looked at him then, with his eyes wide and his lips parted with a wordless breath. He’d felt locked in place, his boots bolted to the cracked pavement and his arms frozen at his sides. Shooting him felt suddenly undoable, as impossible as flight, as dreadful as death, and as unfathomable as the notion of faith. How hypocritical could he be!? He, who preached to Raeder that same day the merit of thinking with one’s head instead of one’s heart, had done just the opposite. In the split second it took him to decide on a course of action, he’d felt the resentment he’d known come to a boil and, strangely, it had felt a bit like love. Love for a brother – he’d never had a brother – or love for something more? It was hard to tell when he had no grounds for comparison.

Keller had started to pace. He paused behind Klemm, close enough that he could smell the bitter zest of cigar smoke on his clothes, the sting of bourbon on his breath. Keller let out a slow breath, cool against Klemm’s neck, and it took all he had not to shudder.

“I asked you a question, Major,” He hummed, sing-song and gentle in a way that felt unerringly lethal. “Why didn’t you take the shot?” 

“It was a moment of great tension, sir,” He cleared his throat, too nervous to effectively lie but all too aware of the implications of his truth. Raeder was the skilled teller of tales; Smith, the convincing performer. He, though, was just Lawrence Klemm – a loyal soldier, caught in the teeth of a beast he hadn’t seen coming. 

“Tension?” Keller pulled away and folded his arms neatly behind his back. “This is combat, Major. Tension is no excuse for letting the enemy escape. You’ve never seen battle, have you?” 

Klemm swallowed and shook his head. “No, sir. The war had been won by the time I came of age.” 

“Then let this then be a lesson in the craft of winning,” Keller paused before the world map, hung up on the wall just below the Führer’s portrait. “We accomplish greatness when we eliminate fear. Fear, you see, is a selfish thing. You must first realize that your life means nothing; there’s solace in that, don’t you think?” 

Klemm dropped his stare to the floor. He knew the question was rhetorical, but nonetheless, he bit back rebuttal.

“We serve not our countries, but a common idea: The idea that Adolph Hitler formed in the victorious years before his death. And nothing, Major Klemm – not comradery, nor fear, nor doubt – must prevent us from protecting that idea from the threats such as those we let slip from our grasp today,” He paused to light a cigarette, sending wisps of silvery-white smoke swirling around his head. “Smith is a traitor. And so is Raeder, if he travels with him. I don’t care who his uncle was. I’ll have him shot like a pig out for slaughter.”

Klemm nodded stiffly, cursing the apprehension rising from his gut. 

“Yes, sir.” 

“I want him found,” He demanded. “And you’re going to be the one to find him.” 

Klemm’s eyes widened, his brows arching in shock. 

“Sir, wouldn’t that be a job suited for a man of higher rank than I--”

Keller held up a hand and Klemm fell silent, knowing that this was a battle he couldn’t win. 

“You worked closely with Smith while Raeder recovered in the infirmary. You know the intricacies of his character; you know what drives him to succeed or fail. I can think of no man better suited for the job, regardless of rank.” He sat down at his desk and crossed his legs. “You’ll lead a unit of men westward – surely that’s where they’re headed – and in the instance that you should find them, you are to take the shot.” He annunciated, clear and crisp. The room was sheathed in a funeral-like stasis; it lacked only the putrid sweetness of assorted flowers and the eerie hum an organ’s ringing pipes. Instead, silence fell like a layer of thick fog, muddled and distorted with the hammering of Klemm’s heart in his ears. “Do you understand?” 

“Yes, sir.” Klemm inclined his arm and clicked his heels, a gesture of formality and respect that he’d never before called into question. But now, in the shadowed, ochre shine of desk lamps and streetlights glaring in from the outside, Klemm realized that he wasn’t indeed so sure of anything.

***

Robert Childan was out of his element.

He’d never left the cityscape of San Francisco. He’d never had any desire to see the world or experience eclecticism or have any dealings with any other jargon that fools dealt out to justify their running away. That’s all it was, really. Running away. 

When his father had left for Canada in the stillness of a distant winter, he wasn’t traveling abroad or seeking out some long-repressed sense of wanderlust and wonder; he was running. He was running from war and responsibility and himself, and, Robert had learned, when you start running from things you can’t control, you never stop. 

Screw seeing the world, he thought. He’d seen enough.

Ed McCarthy looked up from the paper he’d bought out of sympathy from the crippled kid on the corner.

“Some big-wig in the Reich went berserk,” He spoke, conversational and calm, as if they hadn’t just left their whole lives behind in a city they’d never again see. “The whole world’s going crazy. Maybe that’s a good thing.” 

Robert huffed and glanced around, though he didn’t know what he was looking for. Shops and diners hadn’t opened yet – that’s what they were waiting for; the sleazy restaurant situated between two long-abandoned buildings. But something told Robert that Helena wouldn’t look any less lifeless by mid-day as it did at the crack of dawn. It was the kind of city – if you could even call it such a thing – that lived and breathed by night. 

“Yeah,” He grumbled, sarcastic and bitter. “If there’s one thing we need, it’s _more_ crazy.” 

“Crazy can change the world,” Ed smiled that sloppy, sideways grin of his and Robert turned his stare instead to the diner’s door.

“Or end it.” A pause. An agitated fidget. “When does this damn place open? I haven’t eaten in…” He glanced down at his watch. “Ten hours!” 

“Maybe the world has to end before it can get better,” Ed pointed to the name of the publication he was reading; The Helena Phoenix. “Just like a phoenix. Reborn from the ashes of its former self. That’s how it works, isn’t it?” 

Robert rolled his eyes. “I just want something greasy and heart-clogging that will kill me before a nuclear holocaust can.” 

Ed smiled, and when he smiled, it was with his whole body; he crossed his arms and leaned back against the graffiti-clad wall, his shoulders slumping and his eyes glistening with amusement that almost felt out of place. It was the kind of thing Robert might’ve likened to art, had they not been grounded in the sticky, nocturnal wasteland that was Helena, Montana. Art, like Vincent van Gogh and his missing ear; poetic only in its irony.

He’d sunken so deep into his thoughts that he hadn’t noticed the woman that approached them. She had a certain feral madness to her, with her wild red hair and tattered dress, and at first, Robert had expected her to ask him for spare change.

“I need to see that,” She pointed instead to the newspaper in Ed’s hands. It wasn’t a question, but rather a statement laced with the threat of noncompliance. Ed was ready to hand it over, a gesture of kindness or sympathy that only he would be capable of, when Robert snatched it and held it out of reach.

Ed was the nice one. Robert, then, had to be the one that kept them safe.

“Buy your own, lady,” He grumbled. “It’s every man – and woman – for themselves out here.” 

Ed rolled his eyes and gave Robert a glare that said _it’s the end of the world, Bob, lighten up._ He picked the paper from his hands and extended it out to her. He was too soft, Robert thought. The world had given him every reason to be cruel and hardened and bitter. It had taken from him everything he’d dared to love; his home, his work, his friends, and yet he still spared a shred of kindness to the stranger that looked as though she had even less. It might've been touching, had it not been equally unnerving.

She took it from him without as much as a muttered thank you, but she studied the front page with parted lips, staring in disbelief at the picture of the curly-haired, green-eyed bastard that had blown eighty-something Nazis straight to hell. Her eyes glossed over.

“My God.” 

Robert and Ed shared a confused glance.

“It’s pretty crazy,” Ed cleared his throat, much to Robert’s chagrin. “He escaped, they said. I don’t know how he could, with the way those Nazis swarm like bees.” A pause. He studied her bleary eyes and Robert could see an empathetic sadness spread across Ed’s face. “Are you alright?” He added, and it took all Robert had not to groan. 

Clearly, the answer was no, I’m not alright, fuck you. No one was alright in the Neutral Zone, it seemed. Everyone they’d seen looked either hungover or sick, and the woman was no exception. And yet Ed had to ask, because he was Edmund McCarthy and Edmund McCarthy was nothing if not saccharine and gentle to a fault.

The woman read the article through once, and then again, as if she thought the words might somehow change. She looked up after a moment of thick quietness and managed a stiff nod.

“I’m fine,” She handed the paper back to Robert and straightened up, dabbing daintily at her eyes with a tissue she’d yanked from her pocket. “Thank you.” 

Robert was ready to tell her to get lost when two girls came bounding out of a run-down motel towards her, and he threw his head back against the wall. 

“Oh, delightful,” He griped. “Children.” 

Ed nudged him hard in the ribs with a pang of agitation. The woman knelt before the girls and straightened the bows in their hair.

“I told you to stay inside,” She chastised gently. “Remember the rules?” 

The eldest, no older than eleven or twelve, glanced fearfully back towards the building. When she returned her attention to her mother, she drew in a deep breath and squared her shoulders, straightening in a way that reminded Ed strangely of a little soldier.

“The man is back, Mama. The one from yesterday.” 

The woman seemed to hold her breath, letting it out after a pause with a slow, shaky exhale.

“Okay,” She took their hands in either of hers and turned, striding towards the diner. Ed hadn’t noticed that it was opened, but sure enough, lights had flickered to life inside. “Don’t worry; he’ll go away, just like last time.” 

“You in some sort of trouble?” Ed asked, standing up and staring after her. She ushered her children inside and paused at the door, turning back to him with a forced calm.

“If you want to stay alive, you better come inside.” 

Ed looked down at Robert, who looked suddenly as if he’d seen a ghost.

“What do you mean?” Robert leapt to his feet, reaching for the gun tucked into his waistband. “What--”

“C’mon,” Ed took hold of his bicep and guided him inside, steady and composed. The air had a smell to it that Robert couldn’t place, caught somewhere between old books and fast food. The source of the latter was quite obvious, with the sizzle of frying eggs all but making his mouth water. But the former came as more of a surprise; old, wooden shelves of books stretched from the floor to the ceiling, stacked to capacity with titles that Robert knew were illegal back in California. 

_Alright_ , he thought. _Maybe this won’t be so bad._

The server sitting at the counter greeted them with a stiff wave. The woman slid into a booth, the girls to her right. Ed and Robert sat across from them, picking up menus for the simple sake of looking natural.

“Who’s the guy we’re running from?” Ed whispered.

“I’ll explain later,” The woman glanced up at him. “And don’t whisper. It makes it look like you’ve got something to hide.” 

“He’s the Killing Man,” the youngest girl said, a bit too casually for Robert’s liking. Her mother shushed her and pointed her attention back to the menu.

“The Killing Man?” Ed repeated, staring calmly at a picture of burnt toast. “Scary guy, huh?” 

The girls nodded.

“He kills people for money,” The eldest explained. “And yesterday, he was about to kill somebody when Mama stopped him.” 

“And now he says she owes him money, or coat-ladder-all,” piqued up the little one, earning a theatrical sigh from her sister.

“It’s collateral, stupid.” 

“Enough,” The woman set her menu down and took a deep breath. “Enough, girls, be nice to each other. Don’t worry about the Killing Man; he isn’t allowed inside.” 

Robert arched an eyebrow.

“Seems like a strange rule.” 

The woman looked over at him, eyes narrowing. “Does it? Would you want a psychopath disrupting your place of business?” 

Robert looked over at Ed and grumbled, “Been there, done that.” 

A waiter came by and took their orders; an assortment of eggs, bacon, and chocolate milk. Ed had lost his appetite with all the talk of murderers and assassins, and judging by the pallor that had come to Robert’s cheeks, he had, too. But they hadn’t eaten since a gas-station stop halfway to the Pacific States’ border yielded beef jerky and stale donuts, and given their displacement, it was hard to tell when exactly they might eat again. 

“Mama, may we look at books?” The eldest asked, earning a jolt of excitement from her sister. The woman looked hesitantly at the library, and her hands clenched into fists atop her paper placemat. 

“I suppose so,” She said after a pause, and in that same second, the girls had climbed out from their seats and rushed over towards the piles of children’s literature lining the far walls. 

She dropped her head into her hands and sighed, digging her palms into tired eyes and smearing what remained of blotchy mascara.

“So,” Robert folded his hands and leaned in. “You _are_ in trouble. Who did you stop him from killing?” 

“It was a boy,” The woman shook her head. “He was young, maybe seventeen or eighteen. He walked with a limp. The Killing Man – that’s just what my girls call him, I don’t know his name – he works on commission from the Reich, eliminating _undesirables_ from the population and collecting payment for his services.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, her voice laced with disgust. “The boy didn’t stand a chance.” 

“Why’d you care?” Robert asked, a bit more crassly than he’d meant. “If you’re living in a place like this with a pair of children, I’d say you have enough problems of your own to deal with.” 

“He reminded of someone, but it doesn’t matter,” she huffed, too weary to even cry. “He’s long gone.” 

“But the Killing Man isn’t,” Ed leaned past Robert and stared out the far window. All was quiet and still, but there was an air of malice to the streets that promised nothing good, should they set foot outside alone. “Hey, listen; we can help you out.” 

Robert blinked. “We can?” 

“No, you can’t. I don’t want your help,” The woman hissed. “Or your charity. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself and my girls without anyone’s assistance.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Ed assured. “But if you just stick by us for a few days – just until the Killing Man finds somebody else to pick on – it might be safer. There’s power in numbers. There’s one of him and one of you, but three of us.” He made a circular gesture to himself, Robert, and her, smiling at the slow acceptance spreading across her face. 

“You might have a point,” She resigned herself to the fact that the world was imposing and merciless, and with a sigh, she propped her elbows up on the table and dropped her head into her hands. “But if you try anything funny, I’ll have you know that my eleven-year-old shot someone and she’ll shoot you, too, if I don’t first.” 

Robert blinked. This, he thought, is why he’d never want children. He never understood why anyone would want for the little devils, especially in their broken little world. Children served no utilitarian cause; they picked their noses and threw up on your antique Agra rugs, broke your Nolan amphora and then, apparently, your heart. He imagined that it would be a lot like having tiny Frank Frinks running around, only smaller and less likely to con the Kempeitai.

He’d been staring at his hands and he’d missed whatever Ed had said, but whatever it had been, it made the woman smile. Leave it to Ed, with his peculiar mix of Van-Gogh madness and love-all benevolence that put Jesus himself to shame, to make a stranger smile in a run-down diner minutes after she admitted her child was a killer. 

Robert didn’t know if he wanted to kick his ass or hug him and never let go. He’d decided on the former, since he’d been angry almost every day for the past fifteen years, but the whole hugging thing? He almost winced. That was something new.

“My name is Ed,” He extended his hand out to her, and she shook it. Ed gestured to Robert, almost grudgingly, and declared, “This is Bob. We’ve escaped the Pacific States.” 

“Robert!” He corrected without missing a beat. “My name is Robert.” Bob had been his father, he wanted to say, but kept that blurb of knowledge to himself. Bob was a coward’s designation, the mark of a man that ran away. But Robert, as his mother had once told him, was a name that meant fame.

She shook Robert’s hand, almost hesitantly. Robert’s fingers felt out of place alongside hers, and though he couldn’t quite figure out why, he instantly didn’t like her. There was something secretive and almost sympathetic about the way her eyes had glistened when she’d read of the Nazi that killed his own kind, as if he was a human and not a monster, not a product of a machine that would kill him and Ed and everyone he’s ever loved if it had the chance. 

She looked right at him, right into his doubtful eyes, and for a moment, Robert was sure she could read his thoughts. Her smile twitched and strained, but it never faltered; she was a professional liar, Robert could tell. She cleared her throat and straightened in her seat, smoothing out the wrinkles in her dress. When she spoke, she spoke with a calm Robert hadn’t expected, and a conviction that left him feeling only slightly intimidated.

“My name is Helen. I’ve escaped the Reich.”


	7. Avinu Malkeinu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A strange man in the woods. A vast collection of illegal artifacts and films. The boys continue westward, and John's seemingly endless secrets start to surface.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Hanukkah!!! Sorry I haven't updated in a month -- final exams kicked my ass into the next dimension, but here's to winter break! Comments and kudos always appreciated x

Where Erich opened his eyes, it was sunny. There was a beat of stillness, suspended in the fuzzy lack of realization that came with waking up. He’d forgotten everything, if only for a moment, but as he looked to his left and saw John, his chest rising and falling with every sleeping breath, last night’s events came back to him with startling clarity. 

“Good morning,” He sat up and stretched, his eyes temporarily meeting Joe’s in the rear-view mirror. “You drove all night?” 

Joe nodded. “Can’t risk stopping. We should be getting to the train tracks soon.” 

“Thank you for this, Joe. We owe you our lives.” 

Joe nodded again, this time managing a humorless laugh.

“Yeah. You do.”

Erich glanced over at John, sympathy seeping into his stare. He looked like hell. His cheeks seemed pale and sunken, and his posture had undergone a drastic change. The calculating obergruppenführer that stood with his shoulders squared and his head held high had been lost in the plumes of black smoke that blotted out the moon over Manhattan, and in his place had come a nervous man with bloodshot eyes and bruised knuckles. Erich still loved him, maybe even more than he’d loved him before, but everything felt different.

John stirred and whimpered; it was a sound so undignified and wholly unexpected that Erich immediately looked up at Joe to see that he’d heard it, too.

“He’s been going on like that for hours,” Joe turned up the music – a classical march interwoven with the hiss of static. “Nightmares, or some shit.” 

“Oh,” Erich inched closer, reaching his hand out towards John. He half-expected John’s unease to quiet under his not-yet familiar touch, but he knew instantly he was a fool to suspect such a thing. No sooner did his hand fall over John’s arm did John jerk awake, eyes wide and nerves frayed beyond repair. For a moment, he was wild, like a deer caught in a pair of headlights approaching at the speed of sound, and then, once the madness faded, fear took its place. He pressed himself up against the car door and stared at Erich as if, for a moment, he didn’t recognize him. 

“It’s okay,” Erich breathed, voice soft. “It’s okay; it’s me.” 

Unease faded to embarrassment as John smoothed out the wrinkles in his shirt.

"I'm fine."

Joe shut off the music, and Erich actually thought it might’ve been to make the whole thing less overwhelming. But when Erich opened his mouth, Joe held up a hand and shushed him.

“Listen.” 

“I don’t hear--”

“Sirens,” John wheezed, caught someplace between confusion and disbelief. 

Joe cursed as he pulled off the road into the brush growing alongside the highway. He tugged the key out of the ignition and held in between his knuckles like a concealed blade, prepared and anxious for a fight he hoped would never come.

The grass came up to the windows, tall and overgrown, and the trees towering a few kilometers away held the promise of cover, and with that came the possibility of making it through the day alive and, preferably, not detained. Joe kicked open his door and gestured for John and Erich to do the same. 

“C’mon. Keep it low, and they might not see us. Head for the woods.” 

The muddy, murky ground sloshed beneath his shoes and he almost hesitated before dropping down into the mess. The dirt was cold in a way that stung his skin as it seeped in through his sweater and trousers, but the threat of impending arrest – and whatever he worried might come next – captured his attention long before the discomfort could set it. 

There was a point at which he’d stopped paying attention to the distance they put between themselves and the abandoned vehicle, which he knew would stick out like a sore, red thumb against the bramble and brush. 

_So much for inconspicuousness_ , he thought. Panic surged through him for the first time.

“Just keep going. And don’t look back.” 

“I need a gun,” John whispered. To Joe’s confusion, Erich shook his head.

“I’ll cover you if it comes to it.” 

“No,” John demanded, pausing in his low stride. “No, you aren’t going to protect me like I’m some defenseless child, Erich, that isn’t how this works!” 

Erich grabbed his arm and pulled him along. Imprudent as John was, he didn’t resist.

“When you try to take your own life, you temporarily lose your right to bear arms. That’s how it works.” 

At the mouth of the woods, Joe straightened up. The sun reflected from the roof of his car in the near distance, and the rapid, arrhythmic flash of red and blue caught his eye. The police cruiser rolled up to the side of the highway, and a stout, red-faced officer emerged with his gun locked and loaded.

It was instinct when Erich’s hand settled over John’s knuckles, and lunacy when John’s fingers interlocked with Erich’s own, pulling him deeper into the woods and further out of the officer’s sight.

“We have to keep moving,” He declared, though Erich nearly missed it over the sound of his heart thundering in his ears. “They’ll probably search the woods.” 

“I grabbed the map,” Erich pulled it from his back pocket, handing it over to Joe. He had to let go of John’s hand, and only then did John seem to realize with a flush of red how tight his grip had been. 

“How far to the train tracks?” He cleared his throat. “And what do we do when we get there?” 

“You ever heard of train hopping?” Joe snatched the map and studied it as he walked, squinting at the sunbeams slicing through the cover of trees. “We’re about five miles away. What’s your plan when you get to the Neutral Zone?” 

Erich and John shared a thoughtful glance that quickly became uncomfortable.

“I don’t know,” John admitted. “We don’t even know if we’ll make it that far.” As horrid as it was, he hoped almost desperately that they wouldn’t. Or rather, that _he_ wouldn’t. He wanted better for Erich, for the man that risked too much for too little in return. And Joe – he was so damn young; he could make a life for himself in the middle of nowhere, in a town far west where no one knew his name. He could settle down. Meet a girl. Have a kid. John’s heart ached at the thought. 

He longed for the world that he’d help destroy, and it only seemed fair that his own universe should implode with grief at its core. If there was something beyond the Earth, beyond the cosmos and beyond all that was conceivable and finite, John knew he’d long since forsaken it. He’d forsaken it the moment he, with a gun pressed to the back of his head and tears rolling down his cheeks, had signed his soul over to the SS and convinced himself that maybe, just _maybe_ , it wouldn’t be so bad.

“Will you join the Resistance?” Joe piped up, turning John’s attention outward once again. He glanced at the far-reaching treetops as if he hadn’t noticed them before, and only then could he hear the songs of birds singing from their branches, crickets chirping at his feet. He was reminded of the park on the cusp of dusk, and his stomach gave a violent lurch.

Erich shook his head. “I don’t know.” A pause. Hesitant and unsure. “What do you plan to do?” 

“I want to find Juliana Crain,” Joe replied without missing a beat. “I know she’s alive. I know she’s out there.” 

“I hope you find her,” John said, and he meant it. “And if you do, you get the hell out of America and go someplace far away and warm.” 

The corners of Joe’s lips twitched into a smile. How curious, he thought, that John should offer his blessing after all that's happened. Had it not been tender, it might've been funny. “Maybe someday.” 

“What about you?” He glanced at John, and then back over his shoulder. The highway and car felt distant, but he couldn’t forget the police officer. They’d be coming with dogs; he was sure of it. And if they didn’t reach the train tracks by then, they never would. “You said you don’t know, but you have to have some sort of idea.” 

John shook his head, suddenly aware of the weight pressing down on his chest. The air seemed to get thicker with every breath he took, and his heart raced as if it was running for its life. 

“No.” 

“You’ll try to find Helen?” 

“If she doesn’t want to be found, I’ll never see her again,” John’s voice broke, and Joe instantly regretting pressing him for more. “She’s too smart to be tracked, and too careful to leave a trail.” 

“I’m sorry,” Joe muttered, glancing down at his map for the simple sake of having somewhere to look that wasn’t at John’s miserable eyes or Erich’s ever-watchful glare.

“Yeah,” John cleared his throat, digging in his pocket for a cigarette. “Me, too.” 

Behind them, a stick cracked.

They froze, breaths suspended in a moment of silent chaos. One of Erich’s hands found John’s wrist while the other met his gun tucked against his waist. Joe turned, peering back through the seemingly empty brush with careful inspection. 

“What was that?” 

“Someone’s following us,” John muttered, turning anxiously to Erich. “Give me my gun, please.” 

“Get behind me.” 

“Give me my gun!” 

“Shut up!” Joe hit him on the back of the head. “Just relax. Relax and listen.”

John pressed himself up against a tree, looking only half as helpless as he felt. He’d carried a knife since he was twelve years old and a strange, shadow-faced man had stolen the coins he’d peddled. His hands felt oddly vacant, now, with no blade to reach for and no gun to wield against the unnamed threat.

“Maybe it was just--” Joe was cut off by Erich’s sudden motion when he turned to point his weapon just beyond John and the three he held onto.

“Put it down,” He spoke to a man clutching a sawed-off shotgun and staring almost curiously at them from beneath the rim of a bowler had that shielded his eyes. Joe wouldn’t have noticed him, with his brown leather coat that blended into the changing leaves and withered tree bark.

“You’re in the papers,” He gestured to John with the barrel of his gun. “And all over the news, too.” 

John cleared his throat. Evenly, without missing a beat, he shook his head and declared, “You, sir, must think I’m someone else.” 

The man laughed.

“You’re in some deep trouble with the law.” 

“Who are you?” Erich, growing tired of the seemingly senseless back-and-forth, cocked his gun. 

“Thatcher. A friend,” He lowered his own firearm and gestured for them to follow him from the path and into the overgrown brush. “But you’ve got some enemies not far behind.” 

“What are you talking about?” 

Thatcher switched on a radio he had strapped to his belt. Erich hadn’t seen it at first, but he’d been a bit distracted with the gun aimed in between eyes.

_…suspicious vehicle found abandoned off of I-90…static…possibly belonging to....static…wanted in association with terrorism and…static…in pursuit…_

He switched it off again, smirking at the horror that spread across John’s face.

“You’ve intercepted Nazi police signals?” 

He nodded. “And those Nazi police are hot on your tail, Obergruppenführer.” 

John turned to Erich and Joe, shaking his head. 

“You two go; I’m the one they’re looking for. If they find me--”

“Shut up,” Joe told him again, following after the stranger and pushing John along, too. “Nobody likes a martyr, Smith.” 

Erich took hold of his arm again. “It’s a soldier’s code to leave no man behind.” 

John nodded rather bleakly, following behind Joe with Erich at his back. 

“You’re a tough case, sir,” Thatcher looked over his shoulder and smiled at John. “I can’t tell if you’re brave or suicidal.” 

John let out a dry laugh.

“Why are you helping us, Mister?” 

“Times are changing. The Führer is dead. If there’s ever been a time in which hope can rise again, sir, it’s now. Where I come from, you’re no traitor. You’re the hero that’s set a whole lot of parts in motion without even knowing it.” 

Shaking his head, John stuck his hands into his pockets and unconsciously fondled the weight of Erich’s Zippo. There was something relaxing about its cool, even texture, and he’d found that rubbing it could steady his trembling hands. 

“I’m not a hero.”

Thatcher shrugged. “What you think you are doesn’t matter. What matters is that the Reich’s got fifty-thousand marks riding on your severed head, and they don’t shell out that kind of money for just anyone.” 

“They won’t actually pay it,” Joe stated firmly. “It’s all a ruse.” 

“Are you with the Resistance?” Erich changed the topic, perhaps intentionally. The man nodded. 

“In a sense.” 

They came to a clearing, and at the center, there was a cabin. It reminded John eerily of Reinhard Heydrich’s, and with a shudder, he paused in his tracks. Accusatory, he glared at Thatcher and took a step backwards, nearly crashing into Erich.

“C’mon,” Erich guided him towards the entrance. “It’s alright.” 

“How do you know?” 

“Do you trust me?” 

“With all that I am.” 

Erich’s expression softened, and his heart leapt into his throat. He hadn’t expected John to say anything, and yet with five words, he said it all. John’s cheeks took on a pink flush and he dropped his gaze toward the gravel crunching beneath their feet. Erich offered him a reassuring smile.

“Then c’mon. Inside. If he kills us in there, the Reich won't get the satisfaction.” 

The cabin’s interior looked normal enough. It was rustic, wooden, and neat. Antlers hung on the walls, and the severed head of a large boar hung just above a fireplace piled high with wood. To the left of it, there was a pantry stocked with canned goods and nonperishables. To the right, there was a bookshelf. John noticed a Bible almost immediately, and he remembered the forbidden verse that had come to him in Berlin.

He approached the shelf and took the book without asking or saying why, and Joe gave him a look that bordered on incredulous.

“Did they not teach you manners in Berlin? What are you--”

“It’s fine,” Thatcher gave a dismissive wave. “It’s probably been awhile since you’ve seen one of those, huh?” 

“They’re illegal.” His tone bordered on accusatory.

Thatcher snorted. “So is mass murder, Obergruppenführer. I guess we’re even.” 

“Guess so.” 

John flipped it open, flitting through the thin, gold-rimmed pages until he came to it: Genesis 22.

He saw only three words; son, love, and sacrifice. Tears welled up in his eyes and he shut the book, unable to read any further. 

“What’s the matter?” Erich approached him, a hand against his shoulder. He’d touched him more in the past hour than he had in his life, and yet every time felt like the first. Tentative, hesitant, but firm nonetheless, he held onto his shoulder until John stepped away. 

“Nothing.” He blinked away the moisture and leaned against the wall. “It’s just the dust.” 

“Where are you three headed?” Thatcher asked, all too eager to dance around John’s discomfort and change the subject to something much easier than whatever it was that ailed him.

“Neutral Zone,” Joe pulled out the map. “By the train tracks outside of Buffalo. There’s no way the Reich’s watching their coal trains that closely when they’ve got hundreds of miles of highway to cover.”

“Smart,” he remarked. “You meeting anyone, there?”

Joe glanced at Erich, and the two shared a shrug.

Erich cleared his throat. “We haven’t thought that far ahead yet.” 

Thatcher nodded. “It’ll be a long train ride West. Take some food and water with you.” He gestured to the pantry on his way into the kitchenette, pulling open a cupboard and extracting a bottle of whiskey. “You ought to wait out the day here and give those bastards awhile to clear out. I’ve got a contact in a little place called Helena, Montana. It’s where the coal trains go, too. If you head there, you ought to meet up with him.”

“Yeah?” Joe graciously accepted a cup of alcohol. “What’s he do?” 

“Little bit of everything.” He poured a second glass, and when Erich politely refused, he handed it off to John. “There’s no better cure for sadness than whiskey, my friend.” 

John sipped the drink as he sat down against the wall, earning a wary look from Erich. He smiled up at him, but Erich’s frown only seemed to deepen.

“My contact’s got a bar in Helena,” Thatcher continued. “His name is Henry.” He pulled out his wallet and extracted a yellowed, dog-eared card that looked to be blank. “Show him this and he’ll know you’re for real.” 

“What is it?” Joe took the card and inspected it, his lip jut in contemplation. “Looks like just a piece of paper to me.” 

“It’s an ID card, I’d bet,” Erich held out his hand expectantly, and with a sigh, Joe handed it over. “There’s probably something on it that glows under a certain type of light, or reveals itself when exposed to a certain chemical agent.” 

Thatcher laughed.

“Clever kid. He’s right.” 

“Of course he is,” Joe griped. “He’s always right, huh?” 

Erich feigned innocence with a casual shrug. “It was just a lucky guess.” 

John’s attention turned again to the bookshelf, scanning the titles and then stopping dead at the sight of a few reels of film. They’d tossed the one he’d carried with him from Berlin into the Hudson on their way out of town, and a new peak of curiosity brought him to his feet.

“Tell me about these,” John traced the reel’s metal casing with his index finger. “These films. I want to know more.” 

“There’s not much to know,” Thatcher crossed the floor and pulled the film from the shelf, handing it over to John. “But we see worlds so unlike our own, yet too similar to call fiction.” 

Stiffly, John nodded.

“I know.” 

“Do you believe those worlds exist?” 

John looked over at Erich, who shook his head with surprisingly conviction.

“It isn’t possible,” 

“Isn’t it?” John countered.

“Take a look for yourselves,” Thatcher gestured towards the films. “I’ve got a projector set up down here.” 

He stalked past them and pushed the bookshelf aside, revealing a door tucked just out of sight. From his wallet – leather, cracked and aged – he pulled an old skeleton key that he stuck in the lock and juggled around until he heard a click.

“You sure a projector’s all you’ve got down there?” Skeptical, Joe’s eyebrow arched. He tucked his hands behind his back and shared an unsure look with Erich and John. “Seems like an awful lot of security. And with a Bible and these films in plain sight, what’s the point?” 

“The films are just the beginning,” He started down the steps into the basement, and without a second thought, John followed after him.

“Are you crazy!?” Erich whispered, taking hold of his arm and yanking him back. John shook him loose.

“Probably. What are you so afraid of? You said it yourself; let him kill us. That way, the Reich won't get the satisfaction. Besides, _you've_ got a gun.” 

“Fuck off about the damn gun,” Joe grumbled, shoving past John and following Thatcher down the stairs. “Car bombers don’t get to carry weapons.” 

John mocked him under his breath as he and Erich fell in line after them. Erich nudged John and gave him a warning glance.

“You said it was alright,” John reminded him.

“That was before he revealed an underground bunker that nobody knows about,” Erich whispered.

“It’s a basement, Erich,” John rolled his eyes. “There’s nothing strange about a basement.” 

Except, there was something rather strange about the cellar, and that became known the moment Thatcher pulled a lighter from his pocket and set a flickering candle ablaze.

“No lights down here,” He explained. “Electricity this far from town’s not an easy thing to come by.” 

Bookshelves lined the walls, and like upstairs, they were filled to the brim with books and reels of film dating back to the early thirties. But the content differed greatly: In place of a Bible, there was an ornate, leather-bound book inscribed with a foreign yet eerily familiar script. By its side, resting atop similar literature, a series of three rusted, aged menorahs stood tall. The candles shoved in their nine spindly arms had blackened wicks and trails of dried wax cascading down them like tears set it stone, and on the shelf below, a set of tarnished silver tableware was collected dust.

“What is this?” Erich let out a slow breath. He looked over at John, watching his eyes widen with a wonder he couldn’t quite place. The candlelight’s glow caught his angular, pointed features and cast his cheeks in a lambent bronze. It was unfitting, Erich mused, to think about how pretty he looked in the strange lighting, how wondrously out of place the headstrong soldier seemed when pinned up against a shelf of books and blemished metal. Unfitting, perhaps, and yet he thought it nonetheless. Devilishly handsome. Strikingly pretty. Erich could've thanked the low lighting for concealing his blush.

Thatcher dropped the needle onto a record waiting in an outdated gramophone tucked into the corner. The music that played was like nothing he’d ever heard; a lamenting cello rose in its quivering melody above the drone of a detuned piano, and the voice, accented with vibrato and distinct in a language Erich couldn’t name, ascended in a swell of harmonious crescendo. He looked over at John again to find that his eyes had drifted shut, his fingers clenching into fists at his sides.

“You’re a Jew?” Joe said to Thatcher, and yet John’s eyes flashed open at the declaration as if it had been an accusation aimed at him. Erich could mark the exact moment John realized it had nothing to do with him after all, as his shoulders slumped in relief and the tension eased from his set jaw. Curious, he thought.

“In a sense,” Thatcher shrugged. “Avinu Malkeinu,” He pointed towards the record player. “You know what that is?” A pause. “A prayer for repentance. For looking forward. For new beginnings.”

Joe scoffed. “You brought us down here to see a film.” 

Thatcher straightened up and pulled the needle free from the record. The resulting silence seemed to sour as he yanked a sheet free from atop the projector.

“Very well,” He cleared his throat. “Straight to business, I suppose. Take your pick; I’ve got a collection that would give the Führer a run for his money.” 

Joe and Erich turned their attention to the shelves of reels, but Erich’s gaze didn’t stay there for long. He noticed John’s absence, and when he turned to ask him if he was alright, he found that his attention remained fixed on the artifacts decorating the otherwise bleak shelves. The artifacts, too, were bleak in a sense, with their shine stolen by the wears and tears of time. The books, far from crisp and new, looked as though they belonged to an era long forgotten, and yet John looked at them as if they stirred within him a surge of strange reminiscence.

Unaware of Erich’s lingering stare, John reached out and touched the binding of the ornate book. Carefully and painstakingly gentle, as if it would shatter like glass under the slightest pressure, John ran his fingers along the gold-tinged pages and drew in a sharp breath.

His hand fell to his side the moment he caught Erich staring, and Erich instantly looked away, though the damage had already been done. He lowered his eyes to the films before him, barely listening as Joe muttered to him about insanity and faith. He thought instead of the many sides of John Smith, and how the closer he got to the restrained, guarded man he loved more than the breath in his lungs, the more enigmatic he became.


	8. The Lock and Key

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a man in a bar with the answer to an unasked question. Will he be Helen's key in finding out what happened to Thomas? All the while, Lawrence Klemm is never far behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos appreciated! x

Lawrence Klemm adjusted the brim of his hat so that the late-afternoon sun would miss his eyes.

“I don’t get it,” He threw his hands up in the air, staring in wonder at the abandoned car sitting at the side of the highway. His gaze shifted to his companion, returning from the distant phone booth. “Will, you’re sure the plates register to Josef Blake?”

Sturmbannführer Wilhelm Nelson nodded, though his expression revealed no certainty.

“Headquarters triple-checked. You still think he’s traveling with Smith?” 

Klemm turned his attention to the vast expanse of woods that he knew stretched across the entirety of Upstate New York.

“A witness saw them leaving the city.” 

“How credible?” 

“Credible enough for Keller to ship us six hours North to recover an empty car.” Klemm rubbed tiredly at the dull ache forming behind his temples. “Why Joe Blake? Why Smith? Smith had his father arrested; you’d think that would be enough to make the men enemies.” 

Will shrugged. “Not everyone’s loyalties are to their family. Look at Raeder, for God’s sake! His uncle was the Erich Raeder. The Großadmiral! He was a brutal man, and I’m not saying that I agree with some of things he’s done, but If he were alive today to see that his nephew was conspiring with a terrorist…” 

Klemm turned and stiffly squared his shoulders. “I didn’t ask about Raeder. I asked about Smith and Blake.” 

A tension arose between them, and Will shifted his weight awkwardly from foot to foot. 

“It’s impossible to say where either’s loyalties are, Lawrence. You never know what’s going on inside someone until the inside becomes the outside, and then you get situations like the Memorial Massacre. Completely unexpected.”

Klemm cleared his throat, pulling his keys out of his pocket and stalking back toward his cruiser. “We better be getting back. The brown shirts will search the woods.” 

Will jogged to keep up with his long stride. “What about the car?” 

“We called it in. Someone will tend to it.” With a side-eyed glance, he almost smirked. “Unless you feel like towing it halfway across the state.” 

Will shook his head as he made a face caught somewhere between amusement and disgust. “Above my paygrade.” 

*** 

The motel room had a smell. Robert couldn’t place it no matter how hard he tried, but it was definitely there. Not quite bitter. Almost floral, but not quite pretty enough to be the lilies blooming by the window. It hit him like a train every time he stepped inside, and without fail, his nose wrinkled.

“So,” He cleared his throat, gesturing to the two queen-sized beds shoved up against either wall. “Welcome to our humble abode.”

Helen’s oldest daughter, the one she’d casually let slip had, in fact, shot someone, was named Jennifer. She didn’t seem any different than any other child Robert had met – certainly not psychopathic or atypical – and because of her stunning normalcy, Robert instantly didn’t like her. She was a perfect symbol of the Reich; polite, obedient, soft-spoken. It might’ve been presumptuous and unfair; she was only eleven, after all. But Robert believed firmly in the fact that people couldn’t change. Circumstances changed, and people adapted. The Nazi little girl and her Nazi mother were, at the end of the day, part of the regime against which he had a personal vendetta. 

Jennifer approached the dresser, which housed Robert’s collection of decorations he’d brought with him from California.

“I like your vase,” She reached out to touch it, but Helen smacked her hand away.

“Don’t touch, Jenny.” 

Robert stewed. “It isn’t a _vase_. It’s a _Nolan amphora_.” 

Squinting, Jennifer thought for a moment. “I like it less now. It has a strange name.” 

“Jennifer!” Helen barked, guiding her away from the décor and sitting her down on the bed. She offered a sheepish look to wide-eyed Robert, followed by a shrug that might as well have said, _kids will be kids, what can you do? Sometimes they shoot people, and sometimes they insult your ancient Greek pots._

“So,” Ed cleared his throat, leaning back against the wall. “What brings you to Montana specifically, Helen?” 

Helen rummaged through her purse until she found a pack of crayons to occupy her fussy little girl. Ed recalled that her name was Amy, and with the crayons in her hands, her restlessness eased. She began to scribble thoughtfully on a napkin Helen had snagged from the diner.

“It’s complicated,” She shifted anxiously. “And I doubt you’d believe me, anyway. I’ll spare us both the humiliation.” 

“Fine by me,” Robert turned to sit unhappily on the corner of the bed, his arms crossed stubbornly over his chest. “We’ve got troubles of our own, you know.”

Ed glared at him, and he glared right back. He was far from pleased with Ed’s inclination toward the shadowy Reichsfrau Helen. If that was even her name. He almost scoffed. What was she, if not just more trouble? Just a woman, he thought bitterly. He’d never seen the social appeal in a woman, and he knew for a fact that Ed didn’t, either. Yet, it was like Ed just couldn’t help himself. He just wanted to save her, rescue her and her two little brats, as if he was some kind of valiant paladin and she, a damsel in distress.

“The world will only ever get better if good people look out for each other,” Ed chastised, his eyes softening as he turned to Helen. “You can tell us what happened, if you want.” 

Robert could’ve mocked Ed’s benevolence. It was too soft for their nasty world, too tender for a desolate, neon-lit town teetering on the edge of dusk. But when Ed gave him what he’d come to call The Look – side-eyed and borderline riled – he knew he was a lost cause. No matter how much he wanted to keep himself detached and guarded, Robert loved those gentle hands and those soft, puffy lips. He couldn’t deny it. He _wouldn’t_ deny it. He loved Ed’s natural compassion for the destitute and the broken, and he loved the way that gentility could turn like a white-capped tide and become seething resentment toward the world’s destroyers and villains. 

But he also loved Ed’s safety – he loved the security of knowing he’d be alright. If the world went up in smoke, Robert wouldn’t care, as long as Ed McCarthy didn’t go up with it. 

Helen cleared her throat, and Robert snapped back to attention.

“There was a film,” She shook her head. “I don’t know who delivered it, but there was a knock at my door, and then it was there. There was a note with an address for a man named Henry, who owns a bar here. This, too,” She pulled a blank piece of paper from the pocket of her dress, folded and dog-eared in the corners. “I don’t know what it is. But the note said that it’s a key.” 

“A key?” Robert lifted a skeptical brow. “To what?” 

Helen shrugged. “I don’t know that, yet.”

“What was the film about?” Ed had heard Frank mention the films before, and he’d never really understood what could be so groundbreaking about a movie. But Juliana had fled because of one, and Trudy had died for it. He traced Helen’s stare to her purse, and something in him grew anxious.

“It was horrid,” She pulled a round, metal casing out and sat it on the bed, staring at it with a level of unease that didn’t seem fitting for a simple reel. “It showed the end of my whole world. My daughters, and my son…” Her lower lip trembled, and she paused just long enough to collect herself. In the time it took, Robert glanced around the room and took note of her absent child.

“You have a--”

Ed nudged him with a look that demanded, Don’t ask.

“Had,” Helen corrected. “I _had_ a son. I had everything. But the Nazis took it all away, and that’s why I’m here.” 

Taped to the film was the note, and when she pulled it off, she handed it to Ed.

“ _Helen Smith – for your eyes only,_ ” He read, glancing up and biting back a grimace at the feeling of unease festering in the room. “ _This film is a doorway leading out, and this paper is its key. Henry, 102 Main St, Helena, Montana. Be brave. One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them – most will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution. But we must dream, for deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. And then, I saw the light._ ”

Wordlessly, he handed it back to Helen, and she tucked it away into her pocket.

There was a pregnant pause, suspended in mingled confusion and disquiet.

“I don’t understand,” Robert confessed. “It reads like propaganda.” 

“The last bit is a combination of quotes,” She explained. “From different books. Banned, not banned, it doesn’t matter. It seems crazy, but if I didn’t know any better, I’d say it’s a message from…” She shook her head. “From someone far away.” _From someone I left behind._

It reminded her of John, though she knew it was impossible. Wasn’t it? 

She’d seen the article in the paper herself, telling the tale of the destruction he’d brought to the Reich. John was a dead man. He might’ve gotten away once, somehow, from New York. But his escape was as miraculous as it was singular – it wouldn’t happen again. He was brilliant, quick-witted and inventive, but he was only one man pitted against a shoot-to-kill world of horrors just waiting to deliver his head on a platter. She’d wished her last words to him hadn’t been so harsh, so punishing and whiskey-laced as they fell from her poison tongue. She wished she’d held him and kissed him and told him how much she loved him.

And she _did_ love him in spite of it all, but she loved him like she did when they were teenagers sharing a bench in a long-gone Southern park, their noses buried in the same hand-me-down book. Back then, the sun seemed to shine differently somehow. It was softer. Gentler.

She missed the ever-optimistic boy that would call her _ma’am_ as a joke, if only to remind her that she was three years his senior. She missed nights they’d spend in the trees at the edge of her father’s property, reading aloud their favorite plays with a tongue-in-cheek intensity until their bellies were sore with laughter. He was her Beowulf; her brave, courteous companion that grew into the wise, sagacious, and ultimately indistinct figurehead of something awful, something that was never meant to be at all. 

Her eyes had grown damp, and only then did she feel herself falter under the weight of Ed’s stare.

“Helen?” He touched her shoulder while Robert looked away. “You okay?” 

“I’m fine,” She forced a tight smile as Jennifer looked up from her book and met her mother’s eyes with concern. “Everything is fine.” 

“Mother?” Jennifer stood up, smoothing out the wrinkles in her pale blue dress. “May I go with you when you visit the man you came to see?” 

Robert was sure he saw Helen’s eye twitch.

“It isn’t polite to listen in on conversations, Jennifer,” She chastised gently. “You have to stay here with Amy. Where I’m going to go is a place for adults.” 

“I’m almost an adult!” Fists balled at her sides, lip jutting into a stubborn pout, she stood her ground. “I’ll be twelve, soon. And Mama, you shouldn’t go alone! Not with the Killing Man!” 

Robert laughed at the girl’s incredulous determination, but by the way Helen rolled her eyes and shook her head, it was far from anything new.

“I’ll go with you,” Ed glanced between Helen and Jennifer, managing a small smile. “She’s right – you shouldn’t go alone.”

_Like hell you will!_ Robert could’ve screamed. But silently, he fumed beside Ed, a protective hand finding its way around his scrawny bicep.

“I’m not sure that’s wise,” He warned.

“Sure it is,” Ed shrugged. “You should stay here with the kids, though, just in case.” 

Jennifer’s expression soured. “We don’t need a babysitter,” She grumbled. “We never had one in New York.” 

“Well, darling, this isn’t New York,” Helen crossed the floor to peer out the window. The sun had set awhile ago, and a sea of neon signs stared back at her. She could’ve sworn she was looking at a different town entirely. Turning her attention to Amy, who remained silent as she scribbled a picture on the napkin, Helen sighed.

“Jennifer, you look out for your sister, okay?” 

Stiffly, unhappily, Jennifer took her orders like a tiny soldier and managed a proud nod.

“Yes, Mama.” 

“The bar is probably open, now,” Helen told Ed. “Everything around here, except for a few diners, only opens at night. But you really don’t have to come with me. I can take care of myself.” 

“I know,” Ed assured her. “But like I said, good people have to stick together out here, or all hell breaks loose.” Sensing his tension, Ed reached over and gave Robert’s hand a gentle squeeze. “It’ll be alright.” 

“They say nothing good happens after midnight,” Robert pulled his hand away and checked his watch. Turning back to Ed, his features softened. 

“Don’t worry,” Ed clamped his shoulder, turning to Helen. “What’s the plan? We meet this guy, and then what?” 

Helen picked up her purse, the film ticked safely inside. “Hopefully, I’ll get some answers. Find out who sent me that film and what it meant. Maybe there’s a way to change things.” _Maybe I’ll find my son._

“Mama?” Jennifer tugged at her sleeve. “When will you be back?” 

Helen wrapped her arms around her eldest child, and for a moment, the world outside stood still. Brushing a lock of curly brown back behind her ear, she pressed as kiss to Jennifer’s temple. 

“Soon, darling. I promise. By morning for sure. Be good for Mr. Robert, alright?” She turned to Robert with a look that Robert knew was meant to terrify him. _Hurt my daughters,_ it said, _and I’ll make you wish you were dead._

“Yes, Mama.” 

Helen kissed Amy’s cheek, and when Amy didn’t spare her a glance up from her artwork, Helen’s frown deepened. Robert turned away, facing Ed, and pretended not to notice.

“Well,” He whispered, his hands tucked behind his back. “Can I have a word with you in private, before you embark on this nonsensical and potentially life-ending endeavor?” 

“It isn’t _life-ending_ , Rob. But fine,” Ed excused himself from Helen with a parting smile, and as he took hold of Robert’s hand, he yanked him into the bathroom.

The moment the door shut behind them, Robert’s expression fell. The change in his demeanor was as diametrical as day and night in Helena, and the sight of his barred, exposed torment put a pit in Ed’s stomach.

“Rob--”

“You better come back,” Robert whispered, and if Ed didn’t know better, he might’ve thought he sounded desperate. But Robert Childan didn’t get _desperate_. He got _frantic_. Ed had learned that there is, in fact, a difference. “This woman, Ed, no matter who she is, isn’t worth dying for. She isn’t worth losing you for.” 

Still holding onto Robert’s hand, Ed tightened his grasp. His stare shifted from their intertwined fingers to Robert’s pleading eyes, and for the first time since they’d arrived in Montana with San Francisco and familiarity at their backs, Ed felt like he was seeing the Robert he’d come to know back home. 

“It’ll be fine,” He promised with a sideways smile meant to reassure. “You aren’t going to lose me, and I’m not going to die.” 

“You don’t know that.” 

“Yes, I do. I’ll come back. Probably before the night is over.” 

Robert took a deep breath and blinked back the moisture that had snuck into his eyes. 

“You really trust that this woman isn’t leading you into some sort of trap? Her kid killed someone!” 

Ed ran the pad of his thumb across Robert’s knuckles. “She’s a mother. She wouldn’t risk not coming back to her kids, no matter what they are or what they did.” _And I wouldn’t risk not coming back to you._ It was left unsaid, but not unheard. Robert managed a rigid nod as a dissatisfied sigh escaped his lips. 

If he could’ve said he loved him, he would’ve in a heartbeat. But those three words were a triumvirate of horrors, an unspeakable curse. Everything Robert had ever loved had turned to dust in the palm of his hand. He was half-convinced that the universe had gained sentience through its unmatched suffering, and that every time he spoke those words aloud, it saw to it that a part of his world abruptly ended. 

And so he said nothing, but offered Ed a look that spoke a thousand words, a thousand _I’s_ , a thousand _Love’s_ , and a thousand and _You’s_. Ed wrapped his arms around Robert’s neck and took in the smell of him; old books, rainfall, dried blood, coffee stains, home. They stood there for what felt like infinity contained in all of three seconds, and when they pulled apart, Robert had pieced himself back together. Once again he wore the mask indifference, ready to resume his role as the pompous ass Ed knew was only ever an act of self-preservation.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” He vowed. 

To which Robert replied, “You better.” 

Ed pushed the door open to find Helen standing by the bed loading a gun she’d pulled from her purse. 

“You’ve got all sorts of goodies in there, don’t you?” Robert scoffed. 

“Yeah, well you can never be too careful,” She said, turning toward Ed. “You ought to bring a weapon, too.” 

Ed and Robert shared a stunned look. 

“We don’t have one,” He shrugged. “Non-Japanese folks can’t get guns in the Pacific States.” 

“Well, you aren’t there, anymore,” Helen bid her children a second farewell, and then pushed open the door leading into the hall. “We should get going.” Turning to Robert, she softened. “Thank you for watching over my girls.” 

Robert huffed. “It’s not like I was given much of a choice.” 

Ed’s hand that lingered in the small of Robert’s back fell away as he turned to follow Helen out. Once they’d left, Robert sat down on the bed with his head in his hands. 

Something told him that it was going to be a long night. 


	9. Fool's Mate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end of a life, the beginning of a journey, and an ambitious deal gone bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments always appreciated! :)

Joe had only slept for an hour at most, and yet he felt more awake than he had in months. 

It was, he mused, the fault of a restored hope. Tomorrow felt very much alive, though he was certain he’d never been so close to death. One misstep, and the Reich would have his head. One slip-up, and their new Resistance-affiliated so-called friend would slit his throat. Even John was unpredictable. For all he knew, he could snap at any minute and kill him, too.

But then, through all the uncertainty and fear, Joe saw hope at the end of it all. Hope that soon, he might fall into just the right place at just the right time, and cross unlikely paths with Juliana Crain. He’d dreamt of her again, through his short and unsound slumber. He’d dreamt that he saw her slender frame cutting through the trees in the woods surrounding Thatcher’s cabin. He’d dreamt that he ran towards her, following her shadow until he came to the train tracks, and there, she vanished. He stood in the light of breaking dawn, feeling strangely as if he’d lost the faith he’d never really had to begin with. The moon came into focus, and he thought of Juliana’s mysterious intrigue, and then of Berlin. 

And then of Nicole. 

Something ached in his chest. He’d left without saying goodbye.

The sad truth of it all was that there was little else to say, except goodbye. She was smart and strong and able; she was everything, really, but no matter what she was, Joe knew he'd never be able to get over the one thing that she wasn't: Juliana Crain. That was no fault of her own, of course. It wasn’t like one had the luxury of choosing who they loved. 

Erich sat up beside him, and the first thing he did upon waking was reach into his pocket and light a cigarette.

“Breakfast of the champions, huh?” Joe glanced over and managed an unpleasant laugh. 

Erich snorted in response.

Joe inclined against the wall, staring forward at the strange books lining the shelf. “How’d you sleep?” 

“I slept. That’s about it.” Erich’s stare shifted from his cigarette’s smoldering bud to the corner, where John had set up the projector hours before. One film quickly became two. Two became four. Four became a fervent obsession, and long after Erich and Joe had surrendered themselves to sleep, John had stayed up, playing through Thatcher’s collection with unparalleled interest.

The last reel still sat in the projector, clicking quietly to signify its end. Oblivious to it all, John slept, curled around a dusting of film casings. He clutched one in particular in his hands, and upon noticing it, Erich cocked his head to the side.

“He watched those things all day?” 

Joe nodded. “They’re strange, but mostly, they aren’t anything special. Just old newscasts.” 

Erich’s eyes narrowed in contemplation. “Nothing revolutionary?” 

With a laugh, Joe shook his head. “Nah. Just old news.”

“Disappointing.” 

“Yet Smith still watched them all. He’s gone insane, Erich.” 

“No, he hasn’t,” Erich’s expression softened as he looked over at him. “He just lost everything. He has to cope.” 

“There’s a difference between coping and destroying yourself.” 

Erich stood up and stretched, striking a fleck of ash against the tray perched on the table. “We should go soon. If we’re going to travel all night, we shouldn’t waste any time.” 

Joe stretched his arms above his head and winced at the sound of his back cracking. The dirt floor of some strange old man’s basement was far from comfortable, but considering the alternative, he figured he ought to be grateful. 

“Five miles to the train tracks, you said?” 

“About that.” 

“And then…how many to the Neutral Zone from its last stop?” 

“Ninety.” 

“Great.” Joe rubbed his eyes and sighed. “That’s a few days, you know. Unless we can find a car.” 

“The highway patrol was…an unexpected setback.” 

John sat up quickly, startled by the unfamiliar surroundings for a beat until sleep’s fog cleared from his mind and he remembered with a pang just where they were. 

“Good morning,” Erich greeted with somewhat synthetic cheer. “Good night, more aptly.” 

John tossed the film he’d held aside with a carelessness that almost made Erich wince. He spared a greeting wave, but aside from that, did nothing to acknowledge the presence of his companions. 

“We’re getting ready to leave for Buffalo,” Erich told him. “Find anything worthwhile in the films?” 

John scoffed. “They were all useless. Everything was fucking useless.” A pause. “You were right, Erich. It isn’t possible for there to be other worlds. They’re all just clever deceptions.” 

Erich closed the space between them and helped him to his feet, brushing the dust and dirt from his sweater. “It’s okay. Sometimes leads become dead ends.” 

“I want to know who brought me that film in Berlin.” 

“I know.” 

“No one else knew Thomas was sick, except for Juliana.” 

Joe snapped to attention.

“How did she know?” 

“He told her.” 

“He knew her?” 

“It isn’t important. He’s dead.” 

“But Juliana isn’t!” Joe crossed his arms, and a spark of anger ignited in John’s eyes. Erich stood between them, one hand on John’s chest and the other extended toward Joe.

“We can’t take back the lies we’ve told in the past, or undo the damage they’ve caused,” He reminded them both. “But if we want to survive, we have to move forward, and we have to trust each other.” 

Both nodded firmly, albeit reluctant to meet the other’s stare. 

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” John pulled away from them, stuffing a few things into a satchel he’d nicked from the shelf. A few reels of film and an armful of books, among them a copy of the Bible one of the strange, Judaic scriptures Thatcher had kept on display.

Erich gaped at him.

“You’re just going to steal all that?” 

“Not stealing,” He grumbled. “Confiscating.” 

“Confiscating!?” Joe gawked, incredulous. “You’re not some Nazi bigwig anymore, Smith! You’re just a fugitive like the rest of us!” 

Ignoring him, John turned and headed for the staircase. Thatcher had told them he’d leave the door unlocked, and as tried the knob, he deduced that for all the man might’ve been, he was true to his word.

The cabin was quiet, but not in a way that at all resembled tranquility. There was a musty weight to the air that John couldn’t name, but something – perhaps the well-honed instincts of a soldier– alerted him to a rising air of suspicion.

“Where’s Thatcher?” He turned back toward Erich and Joe as they ascending the steps from the sublevel. Joe shrugged.

“I don’t know. Out hunting, maybe.” He turned to look at the boar’s head perched above the mantel, and then at the rifle left untouched on the rack.

“Without his gun?” John shook his head. “I doubt that.” 

He rounded the corner into the kitchenette, and immediately, his stomach dropped as he leapt back in alarm, nearly knocking Erich to the ground in the process.

At the heart of a chaotic and bloodstained mess, Thatcher laid dead. John couldn’t tell where the blood had come from, but there wasn’t an inch of the man’s skin that wasn’t drenched in it. His clothes, saturated. His hair, stiff and matted. Handprints climbed the walls, trailing up to a point that seemed somehow out of reach. 

When John next opened his eyes, he was staring at the ceiling with Erich and Joe crouching at his side.

“You didn’t strike me as the fainting type,” Erich offered him his hand and pulled him up.

John blinked, perplexed. He didn’t remember fainting, but then again, he’d only fainted once before – when he’d seen his first mass grave – and he’d gone from standing before the spectacle to lying in the mud with Rudolph Wegener and Reinhart Heydrich leaning over him in what felt like the blink of an eye.

“I’m not,” He adverted his stare, unable to look at what remained of the enigmatic stranger. He still felt lightheaded, and had it not been for Erich’s hold on his arm, he thought he might’ve hit the floor again. His stomach churned, his head spun. Somehow, he felt responsible. He’d felt responsible for the mass grave, too, even though its corpses predated his enlistment in the SS. It was a strange sort of responsibility, like survivor’s guilt coupled with compassion fatigue, and it left him feeling nauseous. 

“What the hell happened to him?” Joe nearly shouted. “It doesn’t make any sense! The door is locked; the windows are shut; I was awake almost all day and I didn’t hear anything!” 

“We should leave,” Erich declared. “Before whoever killed him comes back.” 

Joe nodded, but not before stepping over Thatcher’s bloated corpse to rummage through the pantry for cans of food and bottles of unopened vodka.

John paled. “You can’t--”

“Hey,” Joe warned. “You’re not one to talk! It’s not like he’s going to be eating any of this, and we have a long trip ahead of us.” 

Food was, without a doubt, the farthest thing from John’s mind. 

“Is the alcohol--”

“Molotov cocktails,” Joe’s expression was deadpan in a way that boarded on disturbing. “You never know what you might need to do.” 

Erich had crossed the floor to peer out through a cracked window. Night had fallen, and the trees, though peaceful, seemed to hold an unseen, lurking danger. 

“Too bad he doesn’t have a car we could take.” 

Joe chuckled humorlessly. “That would be too lucky.” 

“He’s dead,” John coldly reminded them both. “And you’re talking about him as if…as if it doesn’t matter.” 

Frankly, he didn’t know why it felt suddenly so important. Thatcher was a stranger. He’d dealt with the certainty of Rudolph’s demise and the unbearable ache of Thomas’ murder. He’d delivered a fatal injection to his family’s doctor and long-time friend, and he’d shoved a close coworker from the balcony of Headquarters without the slightest sting of hesitance. And then there was the parking lot and the church and the botched attempt at rectifying the toil of his sin, which, granted, didn’t yet feel real. 

Death nevertheless seemed more common than life itself, though Thatcher’s slaughter represented for him everything he’d lost and how quickly it had all come tumbling down. He avoided Erich’s clever eye, as he knew the man was all-too-understanding. He hadn’t deserved his mercy on the eve of a bad decision gone wrong, and he surely didn’t deserve his sympathies as they stole so-called _necessities_ from a dead man’s kitchen.

Erich slid the stolen satchel from John’s arm and shouldered its weight, opening its flap so that Joe could stick the cans and bottles inside. 

After a few minutes of Joe scouring the cabin’s layout for anything that could be of use – a trio of spare coats, an electric lantern, ridged hunting knife, and book of matches – they set out into the crisp cool of night. John felt exhausted in a way that sleep couldn’t fix, and the thought of the ninety-mile trek they’d soon be met with would’ve rid him of his will to live, had he not left it somewhere in in the chaos of Manhattan. 

***

It only seemed fitting that rain would be coming, Helen thought. Rain always came when her world was most at crisis. It had rained an hour after the bomb dropped on DC – hard, slanting, ferocious rain that blitzed the roof like tiny mortars. Desperately, she and John had held each other beneath their blanket, as if a paper-thin sheet of aged, tattered fabric could save them from anything, let alone the end of the world. 

If she shut her eyes she could still feel him beside her, like he was on the night that the Old World fell and the New World dawned; a steady, trembling warmth wrapped in strong arms and dreadful silence. 

She’d found his open palm, pressed against her swollen belly, and interlocked their nervous fingers. They’d fallen asleep like that, tangled together in a mess of sweaty, gangling limbs, red-hot tears, and a thousand emotions that bled together like colors did – to have too many was to have nothing at all, and to feel too much was to feel numb. 

Oh, she’d felt so many things at once before her senses crashed harder than the stock market in ’29. Every raindrop had brought with it a burst of sensation: Grief, as she mourned the loss of a future. Anger, as she cursed every deity she could name. Compassion, for the tears in the eyes of her husband, who’d just lost everyone he’d known in Washington at once. Longing, as it occurred to her that her hometown, with the trees she’d climbed as a child and the paths she’d run barefoot, had been turned to dust.

And anguish, of course, for the opportunities their unborn baby boy had lost a month before he took his first, terrible breath and let out his first, terrible cry. It had rained the day he was born, too. Maybe it had been a sign. Maybe it had all just been one omen she’d blatantly ignored. Bliss was gentler, after all.

Her cousins – a catty, bourgeoisie bunch – always told her it was never a good idea to marry your best friend. Nothing good could come from it. There was a difference, they’d said, between the kind of boy you shared stale donuts with at three in the morning and the kind of boy you married. Maybe she’d been selfish to think that she could have both in John, but strangely, she’d found that she’d give anything to go back to those sunny days in Arlington, where innocence bloomed like the lilacs in her mother’s garden. To hell with love and romance. She missed her best friend.

Helen quickened her pace as a surge of sadness hit her hard in the chest.

No time for that, she told herself. She’d had her heartbreak, crying until she vomited in the sink and screaming until she could taste the blood in her throat. When she dared to think of Thomas, she felt the same as she did the night after the blast. After feeling everything concurrently – rage and agony and everything in between – she felt as if she’d died, too. Maybe seeing Henry would change that. Maybe it would change everything.

Gathering herself with a breath of heavy air, Helen walked with purpose. So much a purpose, in fact, that Ed had to jog to keep up.

“So, you think that movie means something?” Ed had been making small talk ever since they’d set out on their walk, which was proving to be longer than she’d thought. He was a nervous talker, she figured, that filled the air with hollow chatter just to avoid the emptiness that came with silence. In some ways, she couldn’t really blame him.

“I hope it does,” she sighed. “If it doesn’t, I don’t know what I’ll do.” 

“What will you do if it does?” 

Helen paused. Her gait faltered. Honestly, she wasn’t sure.

“I’ll do whatever it takes to prevent the outcome I saw,” She declared. “I want my daughters to be safe, and I want to know who sent the film, and who sent this note. The quotes, they aren’t random.” 

Ed stuffed his hands into his pockets, his tall and awkward stature curved with unease. “What do you mean?” 

“Books that a friend and I used to read,” Thinking of those days spent with John, their noses buried in the same hand-me-down tomes, she reached into her purse and dug around until she found her pack of cigarettes. “That’s why I think there’s more to it than just propaganda. I think he’s somehow trying to tell me something. But I have no idea how, or what, or why.” 

Ed sucked in a breath and glanced anxiously upward. Thunder grumbled overhead.

“You mentioned that your daughter killed someone…” 

“Forget you heard that.” 

“Is that why you left the Reich?” 

“I said, _forget it_ , Ed.” 

Ed sighed. He wanted to know, of course, partially because he was just plain curious, and partly because that little girl was with Robert, and if she was dangerous somehow – psychotic, maybe – Ed felt that he had a right to that information. He'd never been one for keeping secrets.

“All you need to understand,” Helen spoke up after a tense silence. “--is that she was protecting her little sister. A man came into our house, and he was going to hurt them. So she took her father’s hunting rifle and shot him before I could even think. I left a letter that said I did it, and we packed our bags. That’s why we left.” 

“But you _didn’t_ do it,” Ed felt a pang of sympathy. He remembered San Francisco, and how he’d turned himself in to take Frank’s place. For love, he knew, it was easy to put yourself on the line. 

“You don’t have children.” It wasn’t a question. 

Ed swallowed hard and shook his head. “No, ma’am.” 

“If you ever do, someday, you’ll understand then. In fact, I hope you never have to. It’s an awful thing, understanding.” 

They walked the rest of the way in silence. Ed couldn’t think of anything to say, and Helen didn’t seem overeager to talk at all. She reminded Ed of Frank, curiously, though he wasn’t sure exactly how. It was something about the way she kept her red-rimmed eyes focused straight ahead; brave, fragile, and broken all at once. In Ed’s experience, it was a volatile combination that had the tendency to go up in smoke.

“You can still go home,” Helen told him. “You might not want to get involved in whatever this is.” 

“I’m already involved, and we’re already here,” Ed pointed ahead toward a rusted sign bearing the words, _Henry’s Bar and Gentleman’s Club_. “You sure you want to do this, Helen?” 

“Don’t be absurd, of course I’m sure,” She glared at him. “You wouldn’t ask me that if I was a man.” 

Ed’s eyes widened at the accusation. “I actually would!” 

Helen pushed open the door to the bar and stepped inside. She wasn’t sure which caught her attention first – the smell, like frying chicken and beer from a tap, that alerted her suddenly to her own hunger; the sounds, a cacophony of dissonant unknowns performed by a group of African women on a dimly lit stage; or the sight of men dancing in the arms of other men. Hands fidgeting in the curve of thin hips, eyes bearing down onto whiskery faces lined with smiles so wide Helen could almost feel them. She turned to Ed. His face had lit up at the sight, and suddenly, everything clicked.

“You and Robert…” 

“Yeah?” 

“Are you…?” 

Casting his eyes to the floor, Ed muttered, “Yeah.” 

Helen nodded stiffly. “I see. How long?” 

“Not long.” 

“Well,” she gestured for him to follow her to the bar. “Now I see why it’s called a _gentlemen’s _club. I’ll stick out here like a sore thumb.”__

__“That might not be a bad thing,” Ed picked up a drink menu and glanced over it, despite the fact that he had no intention of actually ordering anything. He and Robert only had so much money, and hotel fees were swallowing it up fast. He thought then, for the first time, that maybe it was time they ought to get jobs and adjust to their new lives far away from home. With a place like this, maybe it wouldn't be so bad._ _

__A young man approached them, holding in one hand a bottle of some cheap white wine and in the other, a thin cigar._ _

__“What can I get you?”_ _

__Helen and Ed shared a nervous look, and when Ed gave her a brisk nod, she pulled the blank card from her purse._ _

__“I’m looking for a guy named Henry,” She slid the paper across the counter, watching with growing unease as the bartender’s expression shifted. His friendly smile had vanished as quickly as it had come and hardened into an unreadable mask, and as he stubbed his cigar out into an ashtray beneath the counter, he gestured for Helen and Ed to follow him._ _

__Silently, they fell in line, shadowing him to a door labeled _Manager’s Office_. Ed thought of Robert, and then of how he promised he’d come back to him. For the first time since they’d set out, he began to wonder if it might be more difficult than imagined to keep his word. He shook away the thought. Of course he’d come home, and when he did, he’d take Robert in his arms and kiss him until night bled into day. He’d come home, no matter what._ _

__“Let me see the card,” the young man held out his hand, and Helen handed it over. He knocked against the door, and muffled movement behind it was met with a wide silhouette taking form in the privacy-glass window._ _

__A bearded Japanese man stepped into the light, and Ed couldn’t help but take a step back. He was intimidating, not just in stature – though it was quite impressive – but in presence, as well. There was some sort of commanding air that encircled around him, and every crease in his aged skin seemed as though it was somehow earned. Ed knew it was wrong to profile, but he reminded him of the Kempetai, of the men with hollow eyes that took and took until there was nothing left to take. Before he could stop it, a shudder ran down his spine._ _

__The manager held in his hand a long tube of purple light. Helen recognized it as the exact same kind of light hanging overhead in the bar – black light – which felt strange only for a moment. She didn’t have the time to really think about feelings – she was facing who very we could’ve been Henry himself, the man called out by name in the note that accompanied a film showing her children’s death. She hated him instantly, just by association, but if there’s anything living in the Reich had taught her, it was how to keep a neutral face._ _

__He ran the light over the card, and slowly, a logo came into view. It was a series of triangles surrounding a circle, and in that circle, a series of Japanese characters came into view. Helen’s first thought was of the Pacific States, a place she’d never been nor cared to go. They’d extradite her to the Reich without so much as a second thought. Suddenly, she was all too aware of the weight of her gun in her purse._ _

__With a low grunt, the man handed the card back to her._ _

__“Where the fuck did you get that?”_ _

__“It was given to me,” Helen managed. “Left on my porch late at night, with a film and a letter telling me to find Henry.”_ _

__“Well, you’ve found him,” He lit a cigarette and shooed away the bartender. “A film, you said?”_ _

__“You’re Henry?” Ed failed to hide his disbelief. Helen turned to him with a glare._ _

__“Surprised that I’m not a white man?” Henry laughed. “Would you trust me more if I was?”_ _

__“Listen,” Helen spoke before Ed had the chance. “I don’t care what the fuck you are as long as you answer some of my questions.”_ _

__Ed’s jaw slacked, and a grin split Henry’s lips._ _

__“Where you come from, isn’t it impolite for a woman to swear?”_ _

__Helen’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t know a single thing about where I come from.”_ _

__“Nazi-occupied New York?” Henry gestured for her and Ed to enter into his office. Once inside, he shut the door behind them._ _

__“Arlington County, before that. It’s gone now, with the rest of the District,” Helen hissed. “But it was gone long before it was blown up. Just breadlines and dust and the stink of dying. That’s where I come from.”_ _

__“You mentioned a film?” Henry held out his hand, unmoved by Helen’s soliloquy. “Give it to me.”_ _

__Helen drew her purse nearer to her side._ _

__“That isn’t how this works. You sent me this stupid fucking thing, just to have me bring it back to you? I don’t think so.”_ _

__“You don’t make the rules,” Henry made a reach for the holster at his waist, but Helen beat him to it._ _

__There was a rush of movement and then a faint click, and the next thing Ed knew, Helen was holding out a stolen gun in a fist that trembled with each breath she took. Henry, staring down its barrel, wore no identifiable expression. He made no move backward, nor did he flinch. What kind of man didn’t recoil at the sight of a gun aimed an inch from his temple?_ _

__“Helen!” Ed hissed. “Are you crazy--”_ _

__She tossed Ed her purse, which he nearly dropped in his scramble to catch it._ _

__“Cut the shit, Henry,” Helen growled. “You know why I’m here, and it isn’t to give you a fucking film. Tell me what it means. Who sent me that note?”_ _

__“You’ve seen it, I presume,” Henry smirked, unaffected. “The film. What do you think it means?”_ _

__“It’s a lie.”_ _

__“How do you know your reality isn’t the lie?”_ _

__“There’s only one reality. I’m not insane.”_ _

__“Is there? Aren’t you? Then how would you explain what you saw?”_ _

__Helen hesitated. “I don’t know. That’s what you’re going to fucking tell me.”_ _

__“This universe is bigger than us, Mrs. Smith. Whether or not you believe in it doesn’t change whether or not it’s true,” He cocked his head to the side. “Belief is a strong thing, though, isn’t it? But not strong enough. This reality is hardly the only one. The films prove that,” Henry paused to carefully choose his words. “What you saw in your movie is an awful version of a reality that no longer exists. Things have changed these past few days.”_ _

__“Changed?”_ _

__“There are cracks in the foundation of the Reich, and your husband put them there. You mentioned a note, too. Was it familiar?”_ _

__“John,” The color drained from Helen’s cheeks. “How?”_ _

__“You’ll find out in due time. Your husband received the same film in Berlin,” Begrudgingly, he explained. “It was the only way to set in motion the chain of events that brought us here – to ensure that he believed he was crazy enough and hopeless enough to do something superbly horrid,” Henry crossed his arms, boasting a sudden and victorious smile. He knew he’d struck a nerve. “He’s important to us. What he did took a lot of moxie. It was just what we’d been waiting for; a disruption in the Nazi power structure. It’ll have significances far greater than anything I, you, or him could even begin to fathom.”_ _

__Helen’s hardened stare faltered. She glanced over at Ed, who looked as though he understood everything._ _

__“That guy in the paper,” He whispered, astounded. “He’s your husband, isn’t he!? The Nazi that blew up the church!?”_ _

__“She didn’t tell you that, did she?” Henry smirked. "Horrid choice of a body guard, but the guy is a fast learner."_ _

__“Fine,” She struggled to maintain her resolve. “Transparency, then. John is – was – my husband, and whatever he can do for you, I can do, too. I’m here. He isn’t.”_ _

__Part of her wanted to spare him from whatever came next. Up until the moment she saw Henry, she’d been driven by an all-consuming anger; What happened to Thomas wasn’t directly anyone’s fault, but John sure had been easy to blame. That is, up until the moment she saw his face in the paper. The photo had been taken in Berlin, and God, he’d looked petrified. She might’ve been angry with him for throwing his life away like a smoldering cigarette bud, or for all but ensuring that his little girls would never see him again, or for making her feel alone for the first time in twenty-five years, but that didn’t mean she wanted to hand him over to Henry and his gang of wolves._ _

__“You didn’t bomb New York, he did!" Henry laughed. "It’s just like chess, ma’am – John Smith is the pawn we need to put the Reich in check. Himmler and his Nazi kings, they’ll fall like all kings tend to do.”_ _

__“In chess, the queen is the most powerful piece,” Helen squared her shoulders and realigned her grip on her gun. “She can put the king in check in two moves, you know, but only if her opponent makes the grave mistake of underestimating what she can really do. It’s Fool’s Mate.”_ _

__“Fool’s Mate,” Henry repeated, his lips twisting into a snarky grin. “You’ve played the part of mindless Reichsfrau dauntingly well, Mrs. Smith.”_ _

__“Are you with the Resistance?”_ _

__“I should’ve known you were more than meets the eye.”_ _

__“Answer my goddamn question, Henry.”_ _

__“I’ve never thought I’d be held at gunpoint by a woman—”_ _

__It only took two steps for Helen to close the distance between them, and with a feral growl, she shoved Henry against the wall and pressed the gun into his throat. Ed leapt back, eyes wide and heart thudding violently in his chest._ _

__“Helen, don’t!”_ _

__“You’d do well to listen to your friend, girl,” Henry rumbled, though for the first time, Helen was sure she’d seen a glint of panic tug at his otherwise stoic features. “The Resistance doesn’t take kindly to people who step out of line.”_ _

__“You want the Reich to fall?” Helen gave him a violent shake. “I want that, too, Henry. Almost more than anything else. They killed my fucking son. I’ll do whatever you want, and in exchange, you’ll hear what I want.”_ _

__Henry scoffed. “You’re trying to cut a deal with me? Do you know who I am!?”_ _

__“It doesn’t matter to me who the fuck you are. No man is immortal.” John's words, when he'd turned to him on the night she knew their world would change again._ _

__Henry wavered. Finally, Helen got the impression that he was taking her seriously._ _

__“What’s your price?”_ _

__“I want you to help me get my daughters out of this country,” She bit back tears that threatened to soil her resolve. “The Resistance can do that, can’t they? To someplace that Nazis won’t ever think to look. Someplace where they can grow up, grow old,” A miserable smile came to her lips. “Live like kids again. That’s all they are – kids. That’s all I want from you, Henry. That, and a handful of answers. Grant me it, and I’ll be at your mercy."_ _

__“You don’t strike me as the kind of woman to be at any man’s mercy,”_ _

__“Can you do it?” Helen straightened up, loosening her hold on the collar of Henry’s shirt. Her rage had turned to grief once again. “Help me get them someplace safe?”_ _

__Henry shook himself free of her grasp and dusted off his shirt._ _

__“You’ll meet some associates of mine at the base of the mountain just west of the business district, tomorrow at dusk. They own a ranch house. They’ll be expecting you. They’ll determine if you can make yourself useful, and if you can, we’ve got a deal. If you can’t…” He scoffed. “If you can’t, you better be on the next bus out of town, or we’re going to have a real problem.” His eyes flitted between Helen and Ed. “You’ll come alone, of course.”_ _

__Ed’s attention piqued. “That wasn’t part of the--”_ _

__“Ed,” Helen held up a hand to silence him. “It’s fine. You’ll be with Robert, and I’ll be there, alone, tomorrow at dusk,” She turned to Henry with a glare that could kill. “In return, you’ll keep my girls out of this mess.”_ _

__“In return,” Henry offered his hand out to her, and reluctantly, Helen shook it. “They’ll be safe.”_ _

__Rapping against the door brought order back into the room. Helen handed Henry back his gun and snatched her purse from Ed, keeping it tucked neatly at her side. She and Henry shared a silent nod that seemed as binding as a signature on a contract, and when Helen returned to Ed’s side, Henry barked out a gritty, “Come in. “_ _

__The bar tender appeared, pale and clammy._ _

__“We’ve gotten word from New York,” He swallowed. “Thatcher’s been found dead.”_ _

__Henry’s face fell._ _

__“Dead? How!?”_ _

__“I don’t know, sir. There weren’t any details, really. Murder, though, for sure. He wrote in his mission log that he’d had a rendezvous with Smith and two other men. Pure chance, he’d called it.”_ _

__“John?” Helen stepped forward, earning a distasteful glare from Henry and his young associate. “Where?”_ _

__At Henry’s prompting, the boy, albeit confused, explained, “Upstate New York. He said they had plans to travel all night by He gave them a card and directed them to us.”_ _

__Henry took a seat at his desk and tossed off his glasses, rubbing tiredly at his eyes._ _

__“It’s a blessing that his log wasn’t found. But it’s only a matter of time before the Nazis identify him and learn what he is. They’ve already captured Ms. Hassad in Berlin. We’ve got to speed things up.”_ _

__“If Smith comes here directly, it’ll make things easier.”_ _

__Henry grunted in response. “I suppose.”_ _

__“Can we…” Ed glanced around, uncomfortable. “…go now?”_ _

__Henry turned toward Ed with an expression that made him wonder if he’d forgotten he was there at all._ _

__“I’m sorry,” He said, his tone revealing that he was hardly apologetic in the least._ _

__A rush of movement brought a group of men into the room, their arms locking Helen’s and Ed’s behind their backs. Ed writhed against them, but strength never had been his forte, and when a cold, smelly towel was pressed over his nose, he felt himself falling._ _

__Somewhere far away, Helen was screaming out strings of curse words and empty threats, and beyond her cries, Ed could hear Robert’s voice, like silk, soaked in blood and booze. It was a sound from a dream; the humming of some unspecified Japanese folksong as he dusted off what few relics he had left, fading out to dissonance, silence, and shadows. The scrape of knees against stiff carpet felt removed from the dull ache behind Ed’s eyes, and all he could feel was the sensation of spinning in circles while sitting still. He reached out – to Helen, to Robert, to hope – but he touched only darkness._ _


	10. Curiosity and the Cat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jennifer finds out the truth about her father and learns of a dangerous scheme that could have dire consequences, while John, Erich, and Joe begin their journey by train.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoy! Comments and kudos appreciated x

Jennifer sat up, pulled from sleep by something yet unknown. 

The room was dark, though neon lights bled in from the outside through a crack in the blinds, painting streaks of red against the wall in front of her.

_Don’t be scared_ , she told herself. _Being scared is for kids, and you, Jenny Smith, aren’t a kid anymore!_

A pit of anxiety sat in her stomach, and as she untangled herself from her sleeping sister’s lankly arms, she slipped out of the bed and quietly stood up.

Robert snored softly the desk, where he’d fallen asleep with his head in his arms. Mama mustn’t have been back yet. How long had she been gone? It was impossible to tell. 

There were no clocks in the old hotel, and the watch strapped to her right wrist – just like Papa wore his – had been destroyed somehow, somewhere between New York and Montana. Still, she glanced at it and frowned as the hands hung limply beneath a sheet of cracked glass. Mama had told her to take it off, or else it might cut her, but she worried she’d lose it. It was the only thing she had left that Papa had given her, after all.

From the hallway, a voice rose above the ring of silence.

“Fifty-thousand marks!” A man laughed. There was the sound of a newspaper crinkling. “You know how much I could buy for fifty-thousand marks?” 

“C’mon Rex,” replied another in an accent Jennifer had never heard before. “If we hunt that man, we’re no better than the Nazis. To put a price on stolen shit and illegal weapons is one thing. To put a price on a life? That’s where I gotta draw the line. And besides, this is the City of Thieves, not the City of Terrorist Defects. He wouldn’t come here. Not when there’s Canon City and Old Billings.”

Thieves? Terrorists? Weapons? Jennifer swallowed a surge of panic. Papa always said that the Neutral Zone was where the bad people went because they couldn’t live in the Reich. That’s why she was here, wasn’t it? Because she’d shot that man in the house? 

_It isn’t polite to listen in on conversations, Jennifer._

Mama always said that. She always said it was better to mind your own business, rather than stick your nose where it didn’t belong. _Curiosity killed the cat_ , she’d say. But then, Papa would smile and reply, _but satisfaction brought it back._

She sank to the floor and snuck over to the door, pressing her ear against it and holding her breath.

“Be realistic, Felix,” the first man huffed – Rex, was it? “He’s done horrid things. To find him and deliver him to the Nazis wouldn’t be wrong. We’d just be giving him a taste of his own medicine.” 

“An eye for an eye makes the world go blind. Ain’t that what they say?” 

“For fifty thousand marks, I’d blind my damn self! No more smuggling coke to the Pacific States, no more funneling guns and bullets to the Resistance, no more stealing those films from old Henry at the bar, just living like a couple of kings in South America!”

“Obergruppenführer Smith has a family out there somewhere, huh? If we track him down and send him back to the Reich, we’ll damn a gal and two kids, too. That ain’t worth all the money in the world.” 

Jennifer’s blood ran cold. Obergruppenführer Smith? Papa! He was alive! She smiled as a steady stream of sudden tears warmed her cheeks. Oh, Mama would be so glad to hear that he was out there somewhere! The joy that she felt was strange – it mingled with sadness, and she didn’t know why. Maybe it was because she missed Thomas, and she knew Papa would, too. Or maybe it was because she knew Papa would be angry that she’d fired his hunting gun. He’d always told her never to touch it.

There was a pause, and then she heard the faint sound of paper being balled up. It hit the floor with a dull thud, muffled by the door in between.

“You follow your happy morals, Felix,” Rex scoffed. “I’ve got a family, too. And to feed them, I’ll damn his Nazi gal and brats ten times over. I’m gonna find him, with or without you, Felix Pascal.” 

“Having a heart ain’t no sin, Rex,” Felix muttered, sounding distraught. “But killing a man, now that’s a sin. A bad one, too.” 

“I ain’t gonna kill him. Just find him, that’s all. Find him, and make myself a little phone call.” 

Their voices grew faint as they made their way down the corridor away from her. There was a metal door at the end of the hall that lead outside, and when she heard it click shut, she knew that they were gone. Letting out a shaky, frightened breath, she sank down against the floor and counted to ten in German, just like Papa had taught her to do when she was feeling anxious. 

_Eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht, neun, zehn._

She craned her neck around to make sure Robert stayed where he was – asleep at the desk, and slowly, she stood up. Pushing open the door, she slipped out before he or Amy had the chance to stir.

The newspaper sat, balled up, in the middle of the hallway, right where she hoped it would be. Jennifer scurried to pick it up and unfold it, smoothing out its edges against the wall. Why did the Reich want so much money for Papa? Did they want him to come back? Maybe they were paying for someone to find him because they didn’t have the time to look themselves. But then, why would Felix tell Rex that the Reich would kill him? 

When she saw the photograph they’d used in the paper, something awful began to unfurl. He wasn’t smiling, like he usually did in pictures. It was probably taken in Berlin, because all of the men around him looked just as important and straight-faced and stern. She was never allowed to meet any of them, except Mr. Erich Raeder, and he didn’t seem like the rest. Papa seemed to like him, and she’d overheard him tell Mama he didn’t like anyone he worked with. They all had something, he’d said. An agenda. Jennifer didn’t know what it meant, but the way Papa said it made her think it wasn’t anything good.

Next to the picture of Papa, there was another photograph of the church they’d gone to for Dr. Adler’s funeral. Except it was different, now. There was a fire in the lot, and below it, a caption read, “Into the Flames – Obergruppenführer Defects.” 

Her eyes widened and filled with tears. Papa did that? Papa started that fire? She shook her head. He would never hurt innocent people! Would he? Once she’d composed herself, she turned her attention away from the horrors in the photograph and instead focused on the text beneath it.

“Wanted, dead or alive?” She read quietly, her breath hitching in her throat. “Obergruppenführer John Smith of New York’s Reichs Amerikanische is wanted in association with the terrorist act that took place at Manhattan’s National Church…a reward is offered for his capture…?” She trailed off, shaking her head in disbelief. There had to be some kind of mistake! 

Papa was a good person, wasn’t he? And good people didn’t do bad things, right? Good people weren’t wanted dead by the Reich! 

But then again, the Reich killed Thomas, and Thomas was good, too. Everything that made sense in New York seemed different, now, like it had all turned around and changed faster than she could keep up with it. Everything that was good seemed bad, and everything that was bad seemed good. It was like she had to relearn how to feel, and in the meantime, her life had become a nightmare cast in neon-lit darkness, a series of clever contradictions, like one riddle after another. If a good man, like Papa, did something bad, like he did, was he still good? Or did that one, singular, bad thing make him bad, too? And if she shot that bad man, was she good for hurting someone bad, or bad for hurting anyone at all? 

Sniffling, she sat down against the wall and carefully tore alone the edges of Papa’s picture, ripping away the headlines and words that made her feel so jumbled. She quickly shoved it into her pocket, eyes flitting back and forth between one empty end of the corridor and the other. It wasn’t stealing if the man had thrown it away, was it? He did say that Helena was the City of Thieves. Maybe it turned good people into bad ones. Maybe that was its big secret. Papa used to say that every place had one. 

She started to cry before she could stop herself, and by the time she had half a mind to calm herself down, it was far too late. Her hands, balled into fists, pressed into her wet eyes as sobs snatched her up by the throat and shook her shoulders until she couldn’t breathe. It was the first time she’d cried since they’d taken Thomas away while her mother screamed and Amy stood, frozen and still, like one of those statues in Central Park. She hadn’t really felt like she was there – it was more like she was watching it on TV, or that she was dreaming, and she’d wake up if she only waited long enough, patiently, obediently, calmly, until the sun came up and she peeled open her sleep-heavy eyes to look into the sunbeams slipping in from her window at home.

But the sunrise had come and gone more than once, and every time, she felt further away from herself. She didn’t understand it, but then again in a different way, she did. Papa used to say that part of growing up was understanding and accepting the nature of consequence. Even though he was usually talking about things like the time she pulled mean old Kathy Regan’s ponytail and earned herself a week’s worth of detention, or the time Amy said the F-word and Mama put some soap in her mouth, she figured the same concept probably applied more important things. Worse things. Better things, too. Everything anyone ever did had some sort of outcome that changed them, somehow. Maybe it taught them a lesson, like detention or Lava soap, or maybe it made them run and hide and cry and ultimately grow up, even if they weren’t quite ready to. Even if they still wanted to be a kid.

Pulling the picture out once again, she unfolded it and looked down at it, studying her father’s tired-looking frown and wondering where he was. If she’d ever see him again. If he’d ever done something bad when he was little that made him grow up earlier than everyone else. 

She squared her shoulders and straightened up, drying her eyes and smoothing out the wrinkles in her dress. Papa and Thomas never cried. Papa was a soldier, and Thomas would’ve been one too, someday. But now, Papa wasn’t there and Thomas wouldn’t ever be there again, and so she had to be soldier enough for all of them. And that meant no more tears.

It was then that she realized that she had to be the one to find Papa. If the Reich got to him first, they’d hurt him, and so she knew she had to find him and warn him that his face was in the paper. Then, he’d take her and Amy and Mama and they’d go someplace far away and safe. Maybe they’d get to pick new names, like Alice or Ruby or Rose, and maybe, in this new and safe place, there’d be a beach, and they could go swimming whenever they’d like. She smiled at the thought. 

“Hey,” A voice to her left caught her by surprise, and she leapt to her feet. Half-expecting Robert to be there, ready to tell her mother that she’d misbehaved, she was surprised to see a dark-haired boy standing a few feet away. He couldn’t have been much older than she was. Maybe twelve. His cheeks were dirty and his sweater had holes in it, but strangely, Jennifer wasn’t afraid of him.

“Why are you crying?” he asked her, concerned.

“I’m not,” She wiped her cheeks on her sleeve and tucked the photograph back into her pocket for safe keeping. “Who are you?” 

“Benji,” He held out his hand. “Me and my parents live here. My sister, too, of course.” 

After the brief wave of hesitation passed, Jennifer shook his hand.

“I’m Jenny. You live in a hotel?” 

“Yeah,” Benji’s brow furrowed in confusion. “You do too, don’t you?” 

Only then did it dawn on Jennifer that he was right.

“I guess,” She shrugged. “But I used to live somewhere else. Far away, in a house.” 

Eyes widening, Benji grinned. “You had a house?” 

“Sure did,” Jennifer boasted, a smile tugging at her lips. “Me, Mama, Papa, and my brother and my sister. My brother, sister, and me all had our own rooms. There was a piano, and we had a dog named Max.” 

Impressed, Benji leaned against the wall and muttered, “Wow.” He turned to her, still smiling. “I have a dog. Well, he isn’t really mine. He’s a stray. He lives outside. I call him Dash. Sometimes I bring him food on my way to pick up my mom's order from the store,” He pulled a brown bag from his pocket. “Tonight, I have some turkey for him.” 

“You’re going to the store at,” She glanced at her watch, and her expression soured when she remembered it didn’t work. “Well, I don’t know what time it is, but it’s nighttime. Shouldn’t you be asleep, and won’t the store be closed?” 

“You really are from somewhere else, huh?” Benji giggled. “Around here, people sleep during the day and the whole city wakes up at night.” 

Jennifer gave a pensive nod. “I noticed all the lights on outside. Why’s that?” 

“My mom always tells these stories about when she was a kid, here. The war had just ended, I guess, and she said that these Nazi planes used to fly over,” He flew his fists through the air, simulating the aircrafts. “And during the day, they’d drop bombs,” He opened his hand up, and his eyes traced imaginary explosives down through the air. “But at night, the planes couldn’t see where they were flying, so once the sun went down, it was safe to go outside again. There aren’t any planes, anymore. I’ve never even seen one. But Mom says that people just adapted, and now it’s normal.” 

“Normal,” Jennifer repeated, as if she’d learned the word for the first time. If people could adapt to sleeping all day and being awake at night, maybe she could adapt to living outside of New York, after all. “Aren’t you worried about the Killing Man?” 

“Who?” 

“He hurts people. My mom stopped him from hurting a boy, today, and now he’s after her.” 

Benji thought for a moment, and then his eyes widened in realization. “Oh! You mean Mr. Jasper Wallace. Don’t worry about him. He’s scary and all, but at night, he goes down into the mines outside of the city. There’s a whole lot of bad people down there. Mom says they’re called the Cabal.” 

“The Cabal?” 

“Mhmm,” Benji nodded. “They do all sorts of stuff, like stealing from the Nazis and the Empire, and selling the things they take to the Resistance. Mr. Wallace is probably the worst, and even lots of the bad guys stay away from him.” 

It all seemed like some sort of movie, Jennifer thought. “How do you know so much, Benji?” 

He shrugged. “My mom’s a police officer. Our room is small, and sometimes I listen to her phone calls because there’s nothing else to do.” 

Out of fear of sounding like Mama, Jennifer bit back the urge to tell him it was impolite to snoop. Besides, a more pressing question had occupied her attention.

“I thought there weren’t police officers in the Neutral Zone?” 

“Well, not officially, but someone’s gotta make sure the Cabal mind their own business and leave everyone alone. If it weren’t for my mom and her friends, they’d run the whole city.” Benji glanced around. “Listen, I better get going to the store before my parents start to worry. Wanna come with me? You can meet Dash! You can even feed him, if you want.” 

Jennifer’s surge of delight quickly tainted with gloom and she sadly realized that yes, she did want to go, but she couldn’t.

“I don’t think I’m supposed to go out, now,” She moped. “My mom isn’t home yet, and she’ll be scared if she comes back and I’m gone.” 

“You could leave her a note,” Benji suggested. “That’s what I do.” 

Jennifer crossed her arms and took a breath. That actually didn’t seem like a bad idea. Besides, maybe if she went out, she’d find those men again, and maybe they’d be talking about where to find Papa. 

“You’re right,” She smiled. “Wait here.” 

Quietly, lightly, and without as much of a breath, she slipped back into the dark hotel room and turned over one of the napkins Amy had colored. She plucked a crayon from the floor, and on the blank side, she wrote, _Mama – I went to play with my new friend Benji and his dog, Dash. Don’t worry, I’ll be back soon. _She thought about writing about Papa, but at the last minute, she changed her mind. Some things had to be said face-to-face.__

____

____

She glanced back at Robert. He was still snoring, his face tucked into the crook of his arm, and on the bed, Amy had wiggled under the covers. Perfect, Jennifer thought. She’d be back from the store before they even woke up. 

Just as quietly as she’d entered the room, she left it again. Benji stood just where she’d told him to wait, and with a smile, he gestured toward the metal doors. 

“Let’s go!” 

*** 

The train tracks seemed to span into oblivion. 

Though the night was moonless, there were more stars overhead than John had seen in ages. Probably since before the war. It was almost beautiful, he thought, in the way that the ocean had seemed beautiful when he was young and drunk and terrified to hell and back beneath the same sky in Cincinnati. It was vast, and it made him feel small. Insignificant. Unimportant. It made him feel everything that he swore he’d never let himself feel again. 

Oh, he’d been such a fool! Young and arrogant, he’d wanted so desperately to be important. His father had died in poverty when his coal mine went up in flames, and his mother, who drowned her sorrows in a bottle of scotch after burying her first-born son, had vanished, like snow as it melts to mark the coming of spring. 

It had taken years for John to convince himself that he wasn’t the cause, that perhaps Miriam Smith had left because she couldn’t stomach Arlington County’s dry summer heat, or because the old cherry trees lining the streets reminded her too much of what she’d lost. Perhaps she hadn’t left because her son – the last one remaining – was too much of his father, with his dark curls and penchant for messing everything up. Maybe it was everyone else. Maybe it was the dust carried in on western winds, or the looming presence of the cemetery atop the hill as it overlooked their every move, serving as a reminder that death was never far behind. Maybe city life wasn’t enough. Maybe it was too much. 

Regardless, John had been on his own since he was fifteen – aside from Helen – and he’d sworn to become important out of spite. And he did. But as he inhaled the crisp, cool air, glancing uneasily between Joe and Erich, something in him quietly broke, and he realized how desperately he wanted to be forgotten by the world, a footnote in history, a small, insignificant, unimportant fleck of dust in the wind. 

“Too bad we don’t have a train schedule,” Joe griped, sitting down in the dirt by the tracks with his legs crossed and his hands folded in his lap. “It could be hours.” 

“It doesn’t seem to stop here,” Erich observed. “How do we board?” 

“It slows down, because of the bends in the mountains,” Joe pressed his fingers against the railway’s metallic surface, shaking his head. No vibrations. No train. “We just hop on and hope we don’t lose a limb.” 

Erich swallowed the anxiety swelling in his throat. “Great.” 

“I’m sick of walking,” Joe traced designs into the dirt with a stick he’d picked up in the woods. “We should’ve gone back for the car.” 

“That car is long gone, and with it, so is your ability to be un-involved,” Shamefaced, John glanced over at him. “I’m sorry.” 

Joe snorted. “Don’t be. I knew when I left my apartment, I’d never go back. I’m tired of it all, too, you know. I can’t name you one damn thing the Reich has done for me.” He unzipped the bag containing the goods they’d taken from Thatcher’s, looking satisfied when he extracted a bottle of whiskey. After taking a sip, he offered it to John. 

“I wish I could say that,” John sat down and accepted the bottle, taking a swig and wincing at its heat. “Before the Reich, I had nothing. And then I had everything. And now,” He gestured to the empty woods around them. “Nothing all over again.” He’d found that there’s a unique kind of misery that can only come from bliss. When one knows nothing of happiness, as he didn’t until he’d found a friend in the red-headed, high-spirted and undeniably bourgeoisie Helen then-Russo, misery feels like a limb that’s fallen asleep. Except it isn’t a hand, or an arm, or a leg, but a soul and a mind, buzzing with a numb, static detachment. But once there’s something to compare it to, a slice of heaven, a taste of joy, there’s suddenly something there to lose. And God, John lost it. 

“I know what you mean,” Erich joined him on the ground and turned with a sympathetic look. “Not in the same way, of course, but to a degree, I understand. I never wanted to join the SS. But it was never about what anyone wanted. It was about duty, and family, and honor.” 

“You’ve lost all that, now,” Fatalistic as ever, John met his stare with a crippling sadness. “I’m--” 

“I didn’t lose it,” Erich corrected him. “I finally got rid of it. There’s a difference. I feel free, now.” 

“Funny,” Joe scoffed. “Hunted by the government and probably bandits everywhere, we’re less free than we’ve ever been.” 

“This Henry figure in Helena,” John changed the topic, sensing oncoming discomfort. “What do you think he’s like?” 

“I don’t know,” Erich shrugged. “Strange, I’m sure. I wonder if he knows his contact was hacked to death in his own kitchen earlier today?” 

John shuddered. “What the hell was up with that?” 

“I’d say he did it to himself, if I didn’t know better.” 

“Impossible,” Joe shook his head. “Those handprints, climbing the walls…it was like something from a bad dream.” With a shudder, he paused. “Just another mystery, I guess.” 

“I’m getting tired of mysteries,” John groaned. “The package in Berlin, the dead officer in New York, the man that killed Thatcher…I’m beginning to doubt my own sanity.” 

“Oh, only just beginning?” Joe teased, though when John turned to him with a scowl, he was smiling. “Relax, I’m only kidding. Sort of.” 

“We’ll have to stop in towns along the way from Great Falls,” Erich thought aloud, leaning back to stare at the sky. “There’s no way we can walk ninety miles in one go.” He inched a bit closer to John – a gesture that Joe couldn’t help but notice and silently question. What was Erich’s motivation, he wondered? What was it that had convinced him to give up a life of luxury, exchanging it for criminal enterprise? Joe felt like he already knew. 

Loyalty was one thing, but Erich was motivated by something else entirely. Loyalty was helping John escape. Running away with him into what felt like the frigid clutch of endless night – that was love. Yes, Joe knew, because he’d done it for Juliana. He’d travel through vast and uncharted space like one of those cosmonauts from the movies if it meant loving her, because love was wild by nature and ultimately fearless. And love, then, had made a wild, fearless fool of Erich Raeder. 

“We might not have a choice,” John remarked, reeling Joe back in. He glanced over at Erich as John continued, “The Reich is offering a hefty reward for my head on a stake.” 

“Don’t worry about that,” Erich nudged him, craftily avoiding Joe’s stare. “We’ll be alright.” 

“You don’t know that.” 

“But I have a feeling it’s true.” 

Joe huffed. “Feelings aren’t enough a basis to take risks like that.” 

_Aren’t they?_ Erich’s jaw tensed. “We’ll deal with it when the time comes, then.” 

The shrill wail of a train whistle cut through the air around them, and all three leapt to their feet at once. 

“That’s the train?” For the first time, Erich was made painfully aware of his own fear. It took him by the throat and plunged him into doubt. “How do we know when to jump?” 

Smoke billowed above the trees, and a low rumble shook the ground beneath their feet. It felt rapturous, Erich thought. Like the end of the world. Maybe it was. Or maybe it was just the beginning. 

Joe bit his lip. _This is it,_ he thought. There’s no going back. There never was any going back, but as the freighter neared, it began to feel real for the first time. He slung the bag over his shoulders and took a deep breath. John grabbed his shirt and pulled him back toward the woods. 

“We don’t want the conductor to see us.” 

With a silent nod, Joe drew back and crouched amid the brush and bramble. The train slowed, its brakes howling so loudly Erich could feel the sound in his teeth. Neon sparks followed in the wake of every car, bright against the otherwise murky night, and when John grabbed his arm, Erich knew the time had come to swallow his fear like a spoonful of medicine or a shot of whiskey. 

He’d put himself on autopilot for the jump, following almost blindly behind Joe, who somehow seemed to know exactly what he was doing. Joe hopped into the empty freight car first, pulling Erich and John up next. There was discomfort, a scrape against his hands and knees as they tumbled into the aged metal car, and then, for a beat, it felt like they were flying. 

It was easier than Erich had imagined it would be. He’d expected it to be faster, scarier, and more dangerous, but as he stared out at the slowly passing trees, the night air tousling his hair, he couldn’t help but feel it was the slightest bit anticlimactic. 

John pressed himself up against the back wall, letting out a breath he’d been holding in. 

“We’ve got a long ride ahead of us,” He muttered. “Thirty hours, at least.” 

As the train began to gain speed, Erich moved closer to John and put his hand on his leg, watching as the trees became blurs of green and brown. 

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea to sleep.” 

Joe set their bag down and leaned his head against it. 

“You don’t have to tell me twice.” 

“Do they check the cars?” John tensed at the thought. 

Joe scoffed. “I’d doubt it. There’s too many to check. But to be safe, we should get off just before the final stop in Great Falls. I’m sure there’s going to be hordes of Nazi agents around the border.” 

“You think we’ll make it through?” John looked at Erich in hopes of reassurance. With a faint, strained smile, Erich squeezed his knee. 

“We’ll figure it out.” 

“Thatcher said they’re looking for us.” 

“I said, _we’ll figure it out_ ,” Erich promised. “Trust me.” 

With a weak smile, John nodded and leaned his head against the wall. He shut his eyes, and Erich couldn’t help but watch his chest rise and fall under a newfound wave of calm. 

They made it. They weren’t there yet, but every step felt like a milestone. With every breath, they cheated mortality. With every smile, they mocked fate. 

Joe, laying feet away, had given himself up to sleep. After staying up all day and traveling all night, Erich could hardly blame him. He himself, though, felt wide awake. 

He stared out from the train, peering deep into the vastness of night. The sky encircled them, and as strange as it seemed, it felt as though they moved around it. Beyond it. Erich couldn’t quite explain why. 

There was beauty to it all, though, in spite of everything. The perpetuity of stars – countless, innumerable, and infinite – far outweighed his fear of death. Somehow, he felt comforted by the thought of what horrors those stars had seen. War, and death, and dying; illuminating a history of fallen empires and nations stitched together from ash and dust. It made his entire, awful world feel unfeasibly small, and curiously, Erich felt himself smile. 

John shifted beside him, and briefly, Erich wondered if he’d sensed his pensive trance. Impossible, he’d say, but somehow, nothing felt impossible anymore. 

“You really should try to sleep,” Erich told him without missing a beat. “It’s peaceful, here.” 

Peace?” John laughed miserably. “That’s what you’d call it?” 

Erich paused, his head cocked to the side in contemplation. “Yeah, I guess so. What would you call it?” 

John shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Never mind. You’re right. We should sleep.” 

Erich crossed his arms and nodded stiffly. Moonlight poured into the train car, more like a flicker than a stream, and intermittently, John’s sharp profile was cast in pale white. Every time, Erich felt his heart stutter, and every time, it felt more and more unbearable to look away. 

“Let me ask you something,” John muttered, running a tired hand over his eyes. “Why’d you join the SS?” 

It wasn’t a question Erich had anticipated, and his shock must’ve showed. John dropped his gaze and swallowed hard. 

“Sorry.” 

“It’s alright,” Erich inched to sit closer to him, lowering his voice as Joe tossed over onto his side. “I joined, like I said before, because it was just…it was just the natural progression of my life. There was never any thought of doing anything else.” 

“Because your uncle was the Grand Admiral?” 

Erich wasn’t sure which felt more out of place: John’s sudden interest in knowing about his life, or his own sudden interest in discussing it. Nevertheless, he readied himself for conversation with a deep and steady breath. 

“Partially, I think. And partially because of my father. He died when I was eleven, and the last thing he said to me was, _Erich, someday you’ll understand the world. And when you do, you’ll understand why it’s necessary to do something in life that will create a legacy_.” He paused to pull a cigarette from his pocket. Striking a match against the wall, he lit his own, and then when John leaned in close, he lit the cigarette perched between his lips. Their eyes met, and somehow, the gesture felt intimate. 

“I still don’t understand the world like he said I would, though,” He laughed anxiously. “He used to talk about moving back to Germany when the war ended. He always said life made more sense, there.” 

John thought for a moment as he blew out a cloud of smoke. He was on his last cigarette, and he was determined to make it count. “Why’d you come to America? Doomed, damned, losing the war before we even realized we were in it,” A shudder chilled him to the bone. “I would’ve given anything to be anywhere else.” 

Erich’s eyes fluttered shut. He hadn’t thought about Germany since he was a teenager, and memories were the only thing he’d had. “My sister, Maggie,” He winced. Her name felt like a stranger’s against his lips. “She’d gotten sick, and there weren’t any doctors left in Hamburg that would treat her. They said--” 

“Oh, believe me, I know what they said,” John’s voice broke as he nodded weakly, and the moment Erich connected the dots, guilt surged through him. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t--” 

“Don’t,” John reached over to give Erich’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. “It’s okay. I’m sorry about your sister.” He sucked the life out of his cigarette and then stubbed it miserably against the wall. “Can I ask…?” 

“Polio. There was this thing they had in America that wasn’t allowed in Germany. A giant machine, it looked…it looked like some sort of automated coffin. It was big and it was loud and it just…it just terrified me more than anything else in the world. My mother said it was helping Maggie breathe, but it just…it looked like a monster, to me. It looked like something that should hurt, but didn’t.” 

“The iron lung,” John declared with an inflection that Erich couldn’t quite place. Caught somewhere between disbelief and unease, John stared off as if he was seeing something that wasn’t there. A distant thought held onto an ambiguous memory, long gone yet still lingering like the smell of cigarette smoke and lilacs in the air. 

“Yeah,” Erich fiddled anxiously with his collar. Suddenly, it felt too tight and heavy against his clammy skin. “That’s it. You know about it?” 

John nodded. “My older brother had a type of muscular dystrophy. It got to his lungs and…” He looked down at his lap, biting his lip until he tasted blood. “His doctor thought that tube respiration might’ve helped him. Prolonged his life. But, as we found out, the iron lung was expensive. Too expensive. For years, when people asked what killed him, I told them it was poverty.” 

Erich stared at him, taking in every inch. His trembling fists, his quivering lip, his hard-set jaw, and his glossy eyes...Erich wanted to reach out and touch him, to take his hand and hold onto it until morning, to feel his pulse against his wrist like a steady, beating drum. This, he thought, was John Smith. Not the obergruppenführer nor the terrorist, but rather the bare-boned figure behind a textbook legacy. A father. A brother. Grieving and angry. Raw and exposed in the glow of those endless stars, he attracted moonbeams like stage light, and beneath it, he faltered. 

“Is that why you joined the SS?” Erich asked him. Somehow, they’d inched together in the shadowed darkness. Cross-legged, their knees touched. The closeness felt natural, though, in a way that Erich doubted anything ever could. 

John snorted. “It’s how I _justified_ joining the SS. I joined because a man put a gun to my pregnant wife's stomach," He shook his head, as if to clear away the memory. Drawing in a shaky breath, he continued, "The Nazis were good salesmen, though. They promised a future where no one lived in the kind of deficiency we saw after The Crash, the kind of society in which good people looked out for one another and contributed to a collective, to some kind of greater good free of decadence and excess. They promised Heaven,” He shook his head. “But Hell looks a lot like Heaven to the untrained eye, and I was just about as blind as they come.” 

It wasn’t the first time that Erich had felt guilty, but it was the first time he felt it like a whole-body ache. 

“None more blind than I,” He scoffed. “Thirty-one years old and this is the first time in my life I’ve ever questioned whether or not my perspective was right." 

“Better late than never,” John smiled at him, his hand finding a place on Erich’s leg. 

In an impulsive, reckless act inspired by sentimentality and fatigue, Erich placed his hand over John’s and squeezed his fingers. He’d only realized he’d done it when John squeezed back, and to his utter astonishment, he didn’t feel the need to let go. 

He wanted to tell him everything. God, he could’ve! Easily, too. He even knew the words he’d choose: _I see men the way a man ought to see a woman._ That was it. It really was that simple. What could John say? He’d killed scores of people in a matter of minutes. He’d hated them so desperately that he set his own life on fire, too, just to get even. How could a man that hated so fiercely condemn another for loving in a way that was just as mad? Surely, he couldn’t. He wasn’t in a place to judge him, even if he’d wanted to. Which, Erich hoped, he wouldn’t. 

But if there’s anything Erich had learned in his lonely life, it was that silence had a place in conversation. The train car was no confessional, and as John’s eyes drifted shut, Erich realized that the comfortable stillness settling between them spoke louder and more honestly than he himself ever could. 


	11. Cabal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Klemm and Will have a journey ahead of them that might promise either death or glory, and Jennifer discovers a dangerous pair of bounty hunters hot on her father's trail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW HI I HAVEN'T POSTED IN AGES! Sorry about that? I was traveling for awhile in the spring and early summer, so that kinda got me out of the habit of writing, and then I got super busy working and going to school and working MORE and through it all, I got stuck with writer's block. But the new trailers for season three have me SO HYPED so the fic lives on! Kudos and reviews appreciated :)

Klemm couldn’t bring himself to watch the news.

There were only two things Goebbels and his men deemed newsworthy: The word of the Führer’s passing, and the massacre that happened at Manhattan’s National Church. Frankly, Klemm wasn’t sure which made him more uneasy. 

On one hand, he never trusted Himmler, who took Hitler’s place in the wake of Heusmann’s treason. But on the other, he had trusted John Smith, and what did that ever do for him, except place him under the ever-watchful gaze of Obergruppenführer Keller? 

He felt a sudden pair of eyes on him, and turning toward the entrance, he met Will’s troubled glance.

“What did Keller have to say?” 

Will shifted his weight from one side to the other and crossed his arms tightly over his chest.

“Nothing good.” 

“Care to elaborate?” 

“The car turned up nothing. But searching the surrounding woods revealed a body.” 

Klemm’s stomach lurched. Strangely, it wasn't relief that he felt.

“Was it John Smith?” 

When Will shook his head, Klemm couldn’t quite explain the weight that lifted from his shoulders. John Smith’s death would’ve made his life about ten times easier, and yet the very thought of it sent a chill down his spine and put a pit in his stomach. In a twisted way, he was almost rooting for him. 

“It gets weird, though,” With a cigarette perched between his lips, Will pulled a file from his briefcase and handed it to Klemm. “The body was identified as Gideon Thatcher-Cohen, a Semite that we exterminated in New Berlin, 1955.” 

Klemm’s brow furrowed as he snatched the file. The moment he opened it, he found himself fighting back the urge to slam it shut. He’d seen blood and he’d encountered death up close and personal, but this man hadn’t just been killed. He’d been butchered. 

“There has to be a mistake, here,” Klemm handed the file back to Will. “If he was killed in fifty-five, how the hell was he killed today?” 

“I’m just as confused as you are, Lawrence, believe me,” Will tucked the records under his arm and stared out the window, watching as rain streamed down the glass. “But it is him. Fingerprint analysis confirms it, and if you don’t believe that, there’s more.” 

“More?” Klemm almost laughed. “What more can there be? You’re telling me we’ve found the fresh body of a man that’s been incinerated for almost ten years, and there’s _more_?”

“Indeed,” As Obergruppenführer Keller stepped into the room, both Klemm and Will lifted their arms in salute. “Mr. Thatcher-Cohen had on his person several things that cannot be readily explained. Among them, an obituary from 1951 and a once-blank slip of paper that had a few secrets of its own.” 

“Sir?” Klemm cleared his throat. “I’m afraid I don’t follow.” 

“The obituary,” Keller sat his briefcase down on Klemm’s desk and popped it open, extracting a folder marked with a bright red confidential stamp across the front. From it, he pulled an aged newspaper clipping.

“Johnathan Lee Smith, age 26,” He read. “On the morning of August 30, 1951, Major Johnathan Lee Smith of Arlington, Virginia – formerly of Savannah, Georgia – died peacefully in Washington’s Walter Reed National Military Hospital, after sustaining fatal injuries in Yanggu County’s Battle of Bloody Ridge. Smith is survived by his wife, Helen Isabella, and their five-year-old son, Thomas Edmund.” 

He turned the obituary toward the two baffled men standing before him, and sure enough, the photograph above the text was distinctly familiar. Though younger and different in a way Klemm couldn’t quite explain, the face belonged to the Obergruppenführer Smith. He’d never been so sure of anything as impossible as such a fact, but he knew beyond knowing how that it was true.

Will’s jaw dropped as he turned to Klemm.

“What...?” 

“That isn’t possible,” Klemm cleared his throat and shook his head. “It must be a clever forgery, sir. There’s no way it can be anything else.” 

“Isn’t there?” 

Wide-eyed and stunned, Klemm managed a feeble shrug. “Isn’t there?” 

“It’s time you boys learned something.” Keller tucked the clipping back into the file and turned toward the door. “Follow me.” 

Sharing a dazed and shaken look, Will and Klemm jogged after him.

“What do you make of this?” Will whispered, his once-rosy cheeks as pale as moonlight. “And where the fuck is Yanggu?” 

“I don’t know,” Klemm muttered. “But that hospital was destroyed in 1945 with the rest of Washington. And John Smith isn’t—”

Keller turned to them with his index finger pressed against his lips. A pair of brown shirts passed them by, lost in their own conversation as cigarette smoke swirled around their heads. It wasn’t until they were out of earshot that Keller directed Klemm and Will to the elevator and took a deep, apprehensive breath.

“This is typically information that men of your rank would not have access to,” He declared. “You understand that I only grant you access as it pertains directly to the case you’re working, and should you repeat a word of it to anyone, you’ll be promptly executed.”

Alarmed, Will’s head shot up, and Klemm elbowed him in the ribs.

“Yes, sir,” Klemm gave a grave nod. “We understand.” 

“Furthermore,” Keller stuck his key into a slot in the elevator, pressing an unmarked button that Klemm had never had the authority to question. “In the instance that you’re captured, detained, or tortured, you’re to deny any and all knowledge of what I’m about to show you, even if it costs you your life. Your families’ lives. Are you prepared to do that?” 

Klemm was sure he could see Will’s lips tremble as he managed a difficult, “Yes, sir.” 

“Very well, then,” Keller, seeming satisfied with their cooperation, tucked his elevator key back into his pocket and pushed his glasses further up his nose. As the doors opened, Keller stalked out into the narrow corridor, lightless and tinged with the scent of mildew and rot, and beckoned for the pair to follow him once again.

“This is so fucked up,” Will whimpered to Klemm. “At this time yesterday, I was eating a cheeseburger and thinking about how I’m going to ask Nora Jackson in personnel if she’d like to get dinner sometime, and now I’m in some weird basement at the center of who knows what!” 

Klemm massaged the ache forming in his temples. “Shut up, Will.” 

“I could really use a beer right about now,” 

“I said _shut up_ , Will.” 

At the end of the hallway, they came to a locked door. Keller pulled another set of keys from his pocket, and as he searched for the right one, Klemm stepped forward.

“Sir, might I inquire if Obergruppenführer Smith had knowledge of this?” 

“He certainly did not,” Keller huffed. “Some secrets don’t leave Berlin until it’s necessary. But since his episode at the National Church, the Reich has seen a rapid upsurge in Resistance activity and copycat bombers. Six, to be precise. Six bombs in government buildings and public gatherings, exploding cars left and right. His insolence seems to have started a movement. That, boys, is why I’ve brought you down here today.”

How much has happened in the past few days? Klemm felt suddenly sick to his stomach. He'd always known they were kept in the dark, but now, it felt different. His palms had gone clammy, and the tips of his fingers vibrated with worry.

“What the hell?” Will mouthed to Klemm, disbelieving. Klemm only shrugged. He knew just as little as Will did, though it felt like he knew less than nothing. Everything that once might’ve made sense suddenly didn’t, and everything that felt impossible somehow seemed certain. 

He swallowed hard and followed Keller into the chamber with Will at his heels. Perhaps he’d expected a prisoner chained to the wall and beaten within an inch of life, or a folder containing the codes to the nuclear apocalypse, but instead, there sat a single projector at the center of an otherwise empty space, pointing at a white screen.

“It’s about the films, sir?” He asked, taken aback. When Keller denied it, he was almost relieved.

“No,” Keller rewound the film sitting in the projector’s reel, and with a whirring, low hum, a white beam of light flooded the room. “It’s intelligence from Berlin. Dr. Alvin Friel is Germany’s leading research physician, aside from Dr. Mengele, of course, and he’s found something quite extraordinary. I fear it pertains to the origin of this obituary, and perhaps the origin of our Mr. Thatcher-Cohen.” 

As the film began to play, the fuzzy, indistinct face of an aged doctor came into view. Friel, Klemm figured. He’d seen him in pictures – esteemed for his genetic research, but secretly, silently, Klemm had always thought he was a monster masquerading as a saint. It was for that reason, perhaps, that he’d let Smith and Raeder slip from his grasp days ago. People like Friel had set into motion the machine that ultimately killed Thomas Smith, a child above all else. No amount of research or politics could ever possibly justify that.

“My name is Dr. Alvin Friel,” The man introduced himself. And then, stepping aside, he gestured toward an unconscious woman strapped to a chair. The first thing Klemm noticed were patches of vitiligo – blotches of milky white that stood out in stark contrast against her dark skin. “And this is Fatima Hassand. Except, Fatima Hassand suffered a fatal reaction to research regarding abnormal skin pigmentation several years ago,” He held up a graft of a severed hand preserved in glass, a hand that somehow matched the unconscious woman’s down to ever curve, crevice, and color. 

“What is--”

Klemm nudged Will to silence him, feeling a wave of confusion surface alongside the horror he felt rising like bile in his throat.

“This woman has been dead nearly four years, and yet, she was apprehended and taken into SS custody nearly a month ago for smuggling illegal films across South America. Her skin markings are definitive,” He traced his finger along her hand, and then returned his attention to the graft.

“Further genetic testing has revealed that she is, without a doubt, the same Fatima Hassand. How is this possible, you ask?” He paused, and Klemm had to glance away. It felt as though his eyes were slicing through the miles between New York and Berlin, bearing right into Klemm’s chest like a pair of sapphire bullets.

“It may sound beyond the possibility of our finite realm,” Friel continued. “But she’s living proof of its veracity: There exists another world – perhaps several – beyond our own, worlds in which parallel versions of ourselves live and die and govern societies by a different set of moral values. Travelers have learned how to cross the multiverse, and Germany’s top researchers are in the process of observing mechanical means of transportation to the world we know for certain that Fatima Hassand has come from. There may be others in this world that originate from places far beyond, and it is imperative that we find such individuals, so that we might unlock the secrets of the cosmos, and expand our Great Reich to the furthers corners of existence. Sieg Heil!”

The film ended with a faint click, and as fast as the room had been filled with light, it fell to darkness once again. 

Klemm turned to look at Will, his eyes wide and glossy. Will, with his jaw slack and his heart hammering in his chest, swirled around to face Keller with an incredulous, accusatory stare. When he spoke, his voice quivered.

“Sir, if I may ask…” 

“You mustn’t,” Keller, seemingly daunted for the first time, gestured for the pair to make their way back toward the elevator. As they reluctantly turned with Keller in tow, he continued. “The facts, as I know them, are as follows: There are worlds beyond our own. In one world, John Smith was killed at twenty-six in a war that never happened. Perhaps in another, this wasn’t the case. Gideon Thatcher-Cohen, much like Fatima Hassand, was a traveler, and he’d brought back further proof of these separate realities in the form of the obituary that shows the death of a man we know to be, unfortunately, alive.” 

“What do we do with this information, sir?” Klemm squared his shoulders, determined to understand that which he felt was beyond comprehension.

“The blank sheet of paper,” As they boarded the elevator, Keller pulled a card-sized note from the confidential folder. “The Resistance has been using a kind of ink that appears only under black light. This letter, here, revealed an address. I’ve written in down separately, though you ought to take the paper, as well, in case it becomes necessary.” He handed Klemm a second sheet, upon which he’d scrawled 102 Main Street, Helena, Montana. Henry. “Once you get there, you’re to find out who Mr. Thatcher-Cohen was, and how he got here.”

“That’s in the Neutral Zone,” Will glanced over Klemm’s shoulder at the address. 

“It sure is,” Keller remarked, and as the elevator doors opened to familiar corridors and warm lighting, his lips twisted into a bent and biting smile. “You boys are going undercover.” 

 

***

For the first time, Jennifer felt like she was back in New York. 

Helena’s buildings weren’t as tall as the ones back home that sometimes disappeared into the clouds when it rained, but there sure were a lot of them! She hadn’t noticed during the day, but almost every building she’d thought was vacant came to life at night, like a sleeping beast, cast in neon and shrouded in an energy that was hard to place. It wasn’t even her first night in the city, but it was the first night she’d gone outside, and slowly, she was learning that some things, you had to experience to understand.

“I don’t see Dash anywhere,” Benji muttered. “Maybe he found food somewhere else. The grocery store is just around the corner.” 

Still gazing out at the bars and shops lining the streets, Jennifer stuck her hands into her pockets and absently held onto the photograph she’d stashed there.

“Don’t your parents think it’s dangerous for you to walk alone?” 

Benji shook his head. “It isn’t dangerous. Everyone knows everyone around here, and we all watch out for each other.” 

Jennifer smiled, though she didn’t know why. When it dawned on her, though, that Benji’s words reminded her of something Mama had said about the Reich, her smiled faded fast.

She followed Benji into the store – a corner shop, defined by a bright blue sign out front that read, Sawyer’s Odds and Ends. 

“Hi, Uncle Sawyer!” Benji waved to an elderly man behind the counter. Looking up from his copy of the newspaper – the same one that Jennifer had found balled-up in the hallway back at the hotel – Sawyer’s lips curved into a grin.

“Benjamin!” He greeted. “How’s your mother?” 

“She’s well, thank you!” Benji handed him the list. “She sent me to pick up some stuff,” He turned to Jennifer. “Sawyer is my mom’s older brother.” 

With a nod, Jennifer studied the aisles spanning back into the shop. Overhead, the lights seemed dim, and the shelves, stocked with everything from canned food to firearms to used books, looked like they could fade back into the shadows at any minute. 

“Uncle Sawyer, this is my friend, Jenny. She moved into the hotel recently, too.” 

“Ah,” Sawyer came out from behind the counter and smiled down at them as he plucked the list from Benji’s hand. “Where did you move from, young lady?” 

Jennifer nearly told him the truth – New York. But as she opened her mouth to speak, she caught sight of poster hanging above the register. Though bore the Führer’s likeness, it wasn’t at all like the ones back home. In it, he bled from his nose and from a cut on his cheek, and above him towered a man dressed in an old American Army uniform, just like the one Papa kept in the closet. It didn’t take a long analysis to determine that whoever Sawyer was, he didn’t like the East Coast very much at all.

“Canon City,” She spat out instead, wishing suddenly that she’d paid more attention in Geography class. She only knew the town’s name from the conversation she’d overheard between the two men hunting down Papa. She didn’t know the first thing about it, except that it wasn’t in the East, but something told her that was enough. 

“Canon City?” Sawyer’s eyes narrowed, though his smile remained intact. “Well, it’s a good way you found yourself here instead of there! It’s much safer in Helena.” 

“Yeah,” Benji turned his attention away from the candy shelf, toward Jennifer. “We’ve got the police, like my mom. Canon City only has the Marshal, and he’s like Mr. Jaspar Wallace!” 

“That’s not a name you should know, Benji,” Sawyer chastised as he made his rounds, collecting items from Benji’s list and sticking them in a paper bag. “And it surely isn’t a name you should tell new friends.” 

Benji rolled his eyes, but he held his tongue as he returned his attention to the candy racks.

“Hey, Jenny, do you want anything?” 

Sheepish, Jennifer shook her head. 

“I don’t have any money. My mom took it all with her in her purse when she went to meet her friend.” 

“Uncle Sawyer doesn’t charge us money,” Benji giggled, glancing around to see where Sawyer had gone. Once he determined that he wasn’t in ear shot, he lowered his voice and whispered, “He and my mom make trades. He gives us groceries and stuff for free, and instead of paying him in money, Mom gives him a list with some names on it.”

“Names?” 

“Yeah,” Benji seemed all too excited to share the information he wasn’t supposed to know at all. “Of people trying to run away up to Canada. She gets the names from work, and Uncle Sawyer helps them get away.” 

A chill ran down Jennifer’s spine. Would Sawyer help Papa if he needed to run away? 

“Wow,” She whispered, half to herself and half to Benji.

“Peanut butter cups? Or what about some fruit chews? Gum?” 

Jennifer looked at him, confused. “What?” 

“Candy,” Benji gestured to the rack, as if it was obvious. “Which do you want?” 

In truth, Jennifer wasn’t hungry. Her stomach was nervous, and the thought of eating anything – even candy, her favorite, often-prohibited food – made her feel like she could puke. But Amy did like fruit chews. Maybe she wouldn’t be so afraid if she had some. With her sister in mind, Jennifer reached for a pack of taffy. Benji rolled his eyes, holding onto his peanut butter cups with some kind of pride.

“My friends always pick the chewy ones.” 

“My sister likes them a lot,” Jennifer shrugged. “She misses home a lot, too, so maybe these will make her cry less.” 

“Hm,” Benji seemed suddenly pensive, and Jennifer figured he was probably wondering how anyone could miss a place like Canon City, if it really was as bad as Sawyer’s expression made it seem. “My sister and I both like chocolate best. She’s allergic to peanuts, though. I get these so she doesn’t steal them.” 

Sawyer returned with a bag full of groceries, setting it down in front of Benji.

“That’s everything, my boy,” He spotted the candy, and with a fond laugh, he stuck a second chocolate bar into the bag. “That’s for Leah. Give her a hug from me, and tell your parents I said hello.” 

“Thanks, Uncle Sawyer!” Benji picked up the bag with a practiced ease, heading for the door. Jennifer thanked Sawyer, too, and offered him a smile she hoped wouldn’t give away too much.

“Is Leah your sister?” she jogged to keep pace with Benji. 

“Yeah. She’s older. Fifteen.” 

“My sister, Amy, is younger. She’s only six.” 

Benji had started to say something, but Jennifer had stopped listening at the exact moment she heard a familiar voice swelling amid the sounds around her. 

“Rex, you’re making a mistake!” It was Felix, from the hotel! She could hardly imagine her luck! She thought she’d have to go around looking for him, but somehow, he hadn’t gone far at all. 

She turned to see a round and ruddy-faced not-so-gentleman, poised up against a rusted old bus stop sign. He held a cigarette between two fingers, flicking buds of ash off into the street. Standing in front of him, there was a smaller man, too; skinny and clean-shaven, with long, messy hair and a sweater that looked too big.

“Quiet down, Felix,” the larger man grunted. “The bus’ll be here soon.” 

“Benji, wait,” Jennifer grabbed his arm just before he crossed the street. “You said everybody around here knows each other, right?” 

Confused, Benji stared at her. “I guess. Mostly. Why?” 

“Who are they?” She nodded toward Rex and Felix, and when Benji craned his neck around to get a look at them, she smacked his arm. “Don’t stare. They’ll see you!” 

“How can I tell you who they are if I can’t look at them?” 

“Look at them, but pretend you aren’t,” Jennifer pulled him back against a wall, pretending to point up at gas station sign hanging overhead. Benji looked beyond it, though, and the moment he saw the men in question, he paled.

“They’re real bad news, Jenny.” 

“Bad news?” 

“They’re with the Cabal! My mom’s been looking for them for weeks!” 

“They were in the hotel earlier,” Jennifer told him, which had the exact reaction she figured it would. Benji’s eyes widened and his mouth fell open. He might’ve dropped the groceries, had Jennifer not been there to catch the bag. 

“The hotel!? You’re sure?” 

“Yeah,” Jennifer nodded. “I’m positive. They were arguing over whether or not they should find someone for the Reich.” 

“No way,” Benji gasped. “They’re gonna try to find that Nazi guy, huh? I heard Mom say there’s a reward out for him.” 

Awkwardly, Jennifer managed to nod. Her throat felt tight, and her mouth had gone dry. 

“Mhmm. What do you know about him?” 

“The people my mom works with think he’s a hero,” Benji explained. “He hit the Nazis where it hurts. But for the same reason, the Nazis think he’s real bad. Some people here don’t trust him, either. Who would? I mean, once a Nazi always a Nazi. Right?” 

Jennifer couldn’t quite swallow the discomfort as it swelled in her chest. She chose to focus on the first part: A hero! That’s what Papa was! The fact that a stranger thought so, too, only made her more positive of the fact that she was right, and he wasn’t bad after all. 

“If those guys find him, what’ll happen?” 

“I don’t know,” Benji shrugged. “Nothing good. Why?” 

Jennifer eyed the bus as it sat in traffic a few cars back, just as loud and smelly as they were in New York. Its topper read Great Falls, and suddenly, Jennifer wished she had a map.

“They’re going to Great Falls on that bus. What’s there?” 

Frustrated, Benji shook head. “I don’t know, Jenny! I’ve never been there. It’s in the Reich.” 

“Oh,” Jennifer tensed. They’d barely made it out of the Reich, and if she went back, there’s no telling what might happen. But if she didn’t go, she thought, Rex would find Papa, and if Rex found Papa, whatever might happen to him would be ten times worse. She swallowed her fear and sucked in a breath of damp air. “I have to go there.” 

“What!?” 

“I have to find the Nazi guy before Rex does, Benji. It’s really, really important.” 

“Are you crazy!?” Benji took her by the arm and pulled her out of view, should Rex and Felix happen to glance over. “Why!?” 

“He’s a family friend,” She whispered. “He knew my mom a long time ago. I want to tell you more, Benji, but I can’t! It isn’t safe!”

Benji cursed under his breath, and Jennifer was only surprised for a second. 

“Fine. But here’s a better idea: My mom’s a police officer. You see him get on that bus to Great Falls, we go and tell her, and she and her friends will get in her car and go get him. You think he’s going to pick up Nazi Guy?” 

“That’s what it sounded like. But I don’t know for sure.” 

Benji swallowed hard. “My mom’s looking for him, too.” 

Jennifer froze. “Why?” 

“It’s a real big secret, Jenny, and you can’t tell anyone. Not your sister, not your mom, not anyone, okay?” 

Breathless, Jennifer nodded. Benji never minded telling secrets before, and his secrets seemed pretty big. Fear weighed down her shoulders at the thought of what, in his mind, would constitute a real big secret. “Okay, Benji, I won’t tell. I promise. What is it?” 

“There are movies,” Benji whispered frantically. “My mom and the people she works with collect them. But so do the Nazis, and they’d kill to get their hands on the ones Mom has.” 

“Movies?” Jennifer almost sneered. “What’s so important about a dumb movie?” 

“Mom says they show a different world. More than one different world, actually. And in all the good ones, the Nazi Guy survives. But all the movies that don’t have happy endings, he dies. Either the other Nazis get him, or he dies in some sort of other way, like a war.”

Jennifer shivered. Despite the warm, balmy night, the thought of Papa dying turned her blood to ice. She felt the beginnings of panic setting in, but she swallowed it like a spoonful of cough syrup and sucked in a quick, unsteady breath. “It’s magic, then? The movie, I mean. We can change the way it ends, if it ends badly.” 

“Maybe. Mom doesn’t talk about it in front of me, and she doesn’t like it when I snoop. But I believe it’s magic, yeah.” 

Papa always read to her and Amy before bed, and one of her favorites had always been Alice in Wonderland. If Alice could fall into a different world – one filled with enchanted characters and wicked evils – it only made sense that they could, too. Even though Papa always said it was fiction, maybe it wasn’t. She’d learned that adults liked to tell clever lies that made the world seem softer and nicer and more comprehensively coherent. She always thought it was just their way of being in control – because if there was one thing adults liked more than anything, it was control – but maybe it was more than that. Maybe it was because adults got scared, too, and maybe they were afraid of things that seemed like fiction, but weren’t. 

“Okay, Benji, fine,” Jennifer took his arm and pulled him across the street, weaving through the stand-still traffic. “Tell your mom that we saw Rex get on the bus heading for Great Falls, so she can stop him before he gets there.” 

Picking up the pace, Benji jogged back toward the hotel. Jennifer quickened her stride to keep up, just as a low, distance rumble of thunder brought with it an air of unease.


	12. Ertrinken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Erich's relationship takes a startling new step, and Jennifer learns of yet another plot against her father.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to a regular update schedule, finally. The story continues. If it's getting hard to follow, don't worry! All the little subplots will converge soon!  
> Comments and kudos appreciated x

_John could smell the ocean. He could feel it, too: the cool dampness against his skin, the stickiness of humid air, the sting of salt pressed against his cracked lips._

_He opened his eyes. Beneath his feet, there was a mound of dirt. Six feet wide. Maybe eight feet long. He crouched and pressed his fingers into the crumbling soil, crushing it in his fist. He recognized its tint and texture almost instantly, of course. Limestone. He hadn’t seen limestone since Rennell Island, his own, personal piece of Hell floating somewhere in the Solomons. But that was far away. Wasn’t it?_

_Looking out, he found that as far as he could see, there were only white-capped waves sloshing against distant shores. Overhead, clouds gathered. Thunder rumbled, and the ground beneath his feet trembled. Amid the vastness, a sailboat moved toward him, alone on the raging sea._

_“You’re far from home.”_

_John whipped around at the sound of a familiar voice. Too familiar. Impossible._

_On the rock, ten feet away – had the rock grown? – sat Edmund Smith. In his wheelchair, with the blanket their mother had knit them spread across his lap. John fell to his knees, and gravel dug into his skin. Beyond Edmund, the ocean vanished. In its place stood their childhood home, with its cracked window, broken door, and plump strawberry bushes growing in the garden._

_“Edmund…” John could still feel the ocean against his face, only instead of seaside vapor, his cheeks were wet with tears. “I don’t understand, you’re--”_

_Edmund approached him, reaching out to take his hand. The warmth of his skin was so real, though it couldn’t be. It wasn’t. Except it was. Wasn’t it?_

_“Remember this place?” Edmund smiled, pointing behind them toward the house. “We played marbles and baseball and hide-and-go-seek under those trees. And then Mother would call us in for dinner. Oh, she used to make the best bread, remember? We never knew how she did it, with what little we had. But she always did it, somehow.”_

_“That was before you died and she drank herself mad,” John hissed. “That’s not fair. You get happy memories and what do I get?”_

_“Life,” Edmund retorted, his tone just as scathing. “You get your life. Life isn’t always happy, is it, Johnny?”_

_John huffed and tried his best to glare, but Edmund always could see right through him._

_“Look at you,” Edmund brushed a tear from his cheek. “It’s been a long time since you’ve been happy, hasn’t it?”_

_Overcome by a sudden anger, John pulled himself free of Edmund’s touch and stumbled to his feet._

_“You,” He jabbed his index finger into his brother’s chest. “You had to go and fucking die and nothing’s been right since then. Father died in the mines a year later, and a year after that, Mother married some drunk from Fairfax and moved to God knows where! I was thirteen, you know. I was alone, except for…” He trailed off. The weight of what he’d lost felt impossible to bear. He dropped to his knees once again. A cold wind blew through him, and he felt his shoulders begin to shake._

_“Except for who?” Edmund draped his blanket over John’s trembling frame. John stomach lurched with every breath – labored, harsh, and shuddering – and when he opened his mouth to speak, only a sob forced its way out._

_“Helen,” Edmund answered for him. “That was her name, wasn’t it? Your friend from Douglas Park. Where is she?”_

_“Where’s Mother?”_

_Beside Edmund, Thomas had appeared. Edmund grinned._

_“My name, Edmund Thomas. And his, Thomas Edmund. Ironic, isn’t it?”_

_“Thomas!” John leapt toward him, but he couldn’t touch him. He tried to hug him, to hold him, but his arms passed through him like air. “Thomas! Thomas, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I went to Berlin. I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you how I was proud of you, and I’m sorry I didn’t protect you like I should’ve, I’m...I’m so sorry.”_

_Sobs cut through him like a sharpened blade, and every inch of his skin burned with shame and anger and everything in between. He could feel himself shatter, and every shard of his spent façade dug into his skin. It hurt. It hurt so fucking much._

_Edmund’s hand found his shoulder._

_“Klieg, Klieg, Kleig-Du bist a Nar,” He quoted. “Yiddish. Remember, Father used to say that to you? You are smart, smart, smart, but you’re a fool.”_

_“Forgive me,” John pleaded through sniffles and tears, clutching desperately at Edmund’s sleeve. “Forgive me, Edd, please. For everything I’ve done. Do you? Will you?”_

_“Of course,” Edmund fixed the collar of John’s shirt, just as he did when they were young. “But the forgiveness of a dead guy won’t matter once you wake up, will it?”_

_“I don’t want to wake up,” John blubbered. “I’ve got nothing to wake up to, Edd, you have to know that!” He squeezed his eyes shut and sucked in a sharp breath. “Thomas is gone, Helen and the girls are gone, you’re gone, everyone I’ve ever loved, Edd, they’re all fucking gone! I want to be gone, too.”_

_“You thought that once before, remember?”_

_“No!”_

_“In Cincinnati. You never saw the face of the man that saved you. Who pulled you out?”_

_“No!”_

_“Open your eyes, Johnny.”_

_Edmund’s voice grew distant, more like a whisper carried in by the winds, like Southern dust and Northern rain. John twisted his fists into the blanket around his shoulders. A cacophony of sound swirled around him; music, faint and muted, voices; Helen singing softly, her fingers in his hair, and his father, praying over Edmund’s casket._

_Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba…_

_“Open your eyes.”_

_His mother, shouting, slurring, crying. Gunshots ringing out on Rennell Island, the dull, sloshy thud of bodies falling into wet limestone dirt. Radio static. The clatter of the end of the world; the sound of a city leveled by fission, and the ring of a silence so loud he couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe._

_“Open your eyes, Johnny Lee,”_

_He couldn’t breathe. He opened his eyes just in time to see himself fall into the ocean, except he didn’t fall. He knew that. He’d jumped – it was his way out of Cincinnati, his way out of the Reich, his way out of himself. He’d jumped into the reflection of a coming storm in hopes that the tides would pull him apart._

_But underwater, the noise stopped. Everything stopped all at once. He felt colder than he’d ever been before. So close to death, but it wasn’t supposed to feel like this. It wasn’t supposed to hurt like this. He thought of Helen – God, he wanted Helen. He wanted his best friend back. When her arms had opened to him and he’d fallen into her embrace, it felt like he was stepping through a foyer into the kind of happy home he’d never had. The kind he was never meant to have._

_He was drowning. He didn’t want to die – not like some shipwrecked drunk. He should’ve died in the War, instead. He should’ve just shot himself, or slit his wrists, or hung himself from the rafters by his belt. What kind of fool tried to drown himself?_

_Klieg, Klieg, Kleig-Du bist a Nar._

_He scrambled for the surface, but there was nothing to scramble for. He was alone. He was going to die alone._

_Arms wrapped around him, pulling him up and out and away._

_“Who saved you?” Edmund whispered. “Do you love him?”_

“John, hey. Look at me.” 

John sat up so quickly he thought he’d faint from the blood rushing to his head. The train car spun, and somehow, John ended up with his head against Erich’s shoulder, biting down hard against his own hand to keep himself silent. 

“You’re okay,” Erich muttered to him, tucking a strand of sweat-soaked hair back behind his hair.

John couldn’t stop himself from shaking. It was violent and uncontrollable, and it stole the breath from his lungs. He couldn’t remember the last time sobs had wracked him so thoroughly, so brutally, let alone in front of anyone. Had he not been so desperate for proof that the cold clutch of loneliness he’d felt in the ocean wasn’t real – at least not anymore – he might’ve retreated. But Erich was warm and strong, and Edmund’s words rang like church bells in the back of his tired mind.

_Do you love him?_

“Are you alright?” Erich pulled away only enough to survey the tear tracks on John’s face.

“Yeah,” John managed, though for a moment, he wasn’t sure which question he was really answering. He reached for the blanket around his shoulders, only to find that it wasn’t Edmund’s blanket after all, but rather Erich’s jacket. He held onto it nonetheless. “I’m going mad,” He whimpered. His mother had gone mad. Maybe it was genetic. Maybe it’s just what happened when you lost your first-born child. When you lost your everything.

“No, you’re not,” Erich assured him. “Everyone has nightmares, John.” 

John wasn’t sure when he became John instead of Sir or Smith or Obergruppenführer, but he liked the way his name sounded when Erich said it. It was smooth and gentle and fond, and though he wasn’t sure why, either, it felt like fresh air, or a cold drink. Something alleviating. Something that healed.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Erich asked him, touching his shoulder. He glanced over at Joe, snoring softly with his face pressed into the crook of his arm.

“It was just strange,” John muttered, laying back against the vibrating train car’s floor and staring up at the rusted walls. He pressed his palms into his damp eyes and sucked in a deep breath. “There isn’t much to talk about, aside from that. Sorry if I woke you.” 

Erich laid down beside him, his hands folded over his chest. “You didn’t. I was already awake. Joe was talking in his sleep – something about a girl,” He chuckled fondly. “It was kind of funny. And sweet.” 

“Can I ask you something?” John glanced over at him suddenly, feeling emboldened. It was strange, almost, how fatigue brought out the sentimental side of him. It always had. 

Biting his lip, Erich nodded. “Of course.” 

“Why did you leave New York with me?”

Erich paused, glancing over at John and taking in the sight of him.

“Like I said,” He chose his words carefully. “It just felt right. I believed in my heart that what you were doing was what had to be done.” 

John shook his head. “I don’t understand,” He seemed almost desperate. “Your family, Erich, they were all…they were Nazis. Your uncle, your father--”

“And we’re doomed to become our parents?” Erich shook his head. “No. What happened in New York, John…when it happened, it was the first time I saw a path for myself that wasn’t working for the SS. It was a way out.” 

“That’s all it was?” John hadn’t meant to sound disappointed. He’d blurted it out without thinking about much of anything, except for his dead brother’s imaginary question, and crazier yet, the answer to it.

Do you love him? 

_Yes_ , John wanted to shout. Yes, he loved him. Maybe it was wrong, but his life had been a series of self-indulgent wrongdoings and mistakes disguised as noble acts. What was one more? 

“Of course not,” Erich sighed, his shoulders suddenly tense. “Of course that’s not all it was, John. I just…” He shook his head. “It’s complicated.” 

“Tell me the truth,” John rolled over onto his side, facing Erich. Erich looked at him, into his eyes, and he swore he saw through every façade he’d ever worn. There was an intimacy in silence as it filled the space between them, and Erich knew it was now or never. If there was a God – he’d never been inclined to believe there was – he’d looked down on their train car and taken pity on Erich’s swollen heart.

Weakly, Erich smiled. There were tears in his eyes. “I don’t know how you’ll feel about the truth. I don’t know if you’ll like it. I don’t know if you’ll like _me_ , after you hear it.” 

John inhaled sharply, his eyes glossing over. “I could never not like you, Erich. Don’t be absurd,” He laughed miserably. “You still like me, and look at me, I’m a fucking mess. What’s there to like?” 

Erich reached out and touched John’s cheek, thumbing away a stray tear. 

“No,” He whispered. “There’s so much to like. I can’t even begin to describe it.” 

John’s eyes fluttered shut beneath Erich’s touch. In a different life, he thought, he might’ve known that touch sooner. In a different life, he and Helen would’ve remained the closest of friends, never pushed to marry, never pushed to bear children – not that John would ever wish away their children – but in a different world…he sighed. In a different world, he didn’t miss that which he’d never known.

“Why did I leave New York with you?” Erich brushed his knuckles across John’s jawline, encouraged by the way John melted into his caress. He’d never thought he’d dare to touch him like that – so quietly, so tenderly. God, it was terrifying! But it was also inspired and exciting and new in the best possible way. “Because I had nothing there, John. They would’ve killed me sooner or later.” 

“Why would they have done that?” John placed his hand against Erich’s cheek, and Erich felt his heart leap into his throat.

“Take a guess.” 

It was a dare, a test, and a dance. John knew the answer, and yet he’d asked the question nonetheless. Erich wondered why. Even half-delirious and shaken to his core, John was a clever man. Nothing he said was undeliberate. It must’ve been a game – maybe this was what flirtation felt like; clammy palms, bleary eyes, a heartbeat faster than the train carrying them into the wide unknown. Yes, that seemed right. It felt impossible, almost, and incredibly unreal. Like a dream. A fantasy. It felt like the exact kind of thing that happened to other people, but not him. Never him. And yet, there they were. 

A moment of irresolute calm passed in the time it took John to close the space between them, and the next thing Erich knew, John’s lips were pressed against his. Hand cupping his pink-flushed cheek, he kissed him deeply, ardently, desperately. Erich was sure he was dreaming, now, except he was too aware of the way it felt; the warmth of John’s touch, the inexplicable closeness, like nothing he’d ever felt before. 

And Erich kissed him, too. He kissed him with four years’ worth of wanting, fearing, denying, indulging. He’d never kissed anyone, and frankly, he never thought he would, let alone John! He could hardly wrap his head around it. 

John, who he’d silently loved since the moment he’d looked at him and known – inexplicably and beyond a shadow of doubt – that there was something soft and stunning beneath his stoic, porcelain façade. Kissing him felt simple, now, as if it had only ever been the natural progression of events fallen perfectly in place to bring them both there, filling liminal space with inexorable meaning and undeniable significance. 

It felt perfect. It felt right. But it wasn’t. Not now. Not like this. 

“John,” Erich pressed his hand into John’s chest, putting just enough space between them to see the dog-tired look in his bleary eyes and the tremble to his swollen lips. It only reaffirmed the reservations in Erich’s heavy-heart: To kiss John now, while the aftershocks of bad dreams rattled him like an earthquake, was to take advantage of his grief, to exploit his fear of isolation for personal gain. He was drunk on nightmares and fatigue, and anything Erich took from him then was stolen, not given, and it didn’t take experience in the field of romance for Erich to know better.

“I’m sorry,” John apologized, pulling away with a horrified expression. “I don’t know…Erich, I’m sorry, I just thought…I don’t know, I--”

Erich put his arms around him and pulled him in close, pressing a final kiss to his temple as his John ducked his head into his shoulder.

“Don’t be sorry,” Erich whispered, his fingers tangling through John’s unkempt curls. “I’ve loved you for ages. I know it isn’t…it isn’t normal; I mean…they’d kill me in New York. I’m an asocial, John, and--” 

“Don’t you dare say that,” John glared at him, though somehow, its threat was offset by the tear tracks reflecting moonlight on his cheeks. “Fuck all that, Erich. Fuck it. I want to love you,” He kissed Erich again, just as urgently as before. When he pulled away, he was in tears. “I don’t care about anything else.” 

“You care about Helen,” It took all Erich had to force himself away from what he’d always wanted, and the moment he did, it was as if he’d hit pause on the entire world. John froze: his hand immobilized halfway to Erich’s own, and his shaky exhale caught somewhere between a scoff and a sob. Even his shoulders ceased in their tremolo for the time it took Erich to remember how to breathe. John was dropped back into reality, and it was then that he felt as if he'd been jarred awake by something terrible, just like he'd been a lifetime ago on that strange night in Berlin. Erich sensed this, and he paled.

“I’m--”

“No,” John spoke through the lump in his throat. “You’re right. She’s my wife. She’s my…my friend, too. Was. She was. I'll never see her again. My daughters, what if I don't? See them again, I mean. What if I do, and they want nothing to do with me? What am I even doing here?” He’d put up a wall around himself, and with the return of his formal, stoic disguise, he pulled himself out of Erich’s arms and pressed his back up against the wall. He peered beyond Erich, beyond Joe’s sleeping silhouette, and he stared out into the purple glow of impending dawn.

“That should change something, shouldn’t it?” John whispered, refusing eye contact. “That should change everything that just happened. But it doesn’t change a goddamn thing. How awful is that?” He laughed bitterly. “How soulless am I?” 

“It isn’t awful,” Erich insisted. “And you aren’t soulless. I understand. Honestly, John. I mean it,” He held his hand out, and with a shred of reluctant, John took hold of it. “And listen…if you…if you, you know…if you mean what you said – that you want to love me, I mean – you know I feel that way, too, don’t you? That’s why I left New York. Because I want to love you too, and when you want to love someone, you still love them when they’re a mess, when they’re scared, or hurting. It isn’t possible just to stop caring about someone – no matter how much space there is between you and them, it doesn’t just go away. It’s like a memory you can’t forget, or like a reoccurring dream that almost makes sense, but still somehow doesn’t.” 

John laughed despite the moisture in his eyes. “You should’ve been a poet, not a soldier.” 

Erich’s expression relaxed as he turned to John with a gloomy smile. “There’s no place for poetry in a world like ours.” 

John squeezed his fingers, grounded by the weight of Erich squeezing back. He inched closer to him once again, settling into their shared warmth. It was true, what Erich had said; he loved Helen. He really did. He loved her so much that he felt homesick for the sound of her voice, comforting and constant, but he also loved Erich in a way that was distinctive and new. Helen felt like home, but Erich felt like a pleasant dream. Like something he could hold onto while the world he’d once held in the palm of his hand slipped from his grasp and he fell from grace. Like something he wouldn’t want to let go of, even when it was time to wake up.

***

Benji pushed open the door to the hotel suite and flicked on the lights, dropping the bags of groceries onto the couch.

“Mom!” He rushed into the kitchenette with Jenny right behind him. A woman turned around, concern as plain on her face as the prominent scar that ran down from her hairline, across her milky eye, and stopped only at the base of her neck, where it vanished into the collar of a green sweater. Jennifer did her best not to stare – Mama and Papa always said it was impolite – but it was hard to keep her gaze away.

“Who’s this?” She dried her hands on her pants, turning her attention away from the dishes she’d been washing in the sink. “Did you get the groceries?”

“She’s my friend,” He explained. “And yeah. But listen, Ma, we saw those guys from the Cabal, and Jenny heard them talking, and they were saying that they’re gonna go after that guy from New York that blew up the lot!” 

“Benji!” She chastised, pulling the window shut behind her. “How many times have I told you--”

“I know, I know, I shouldn’t listen to what you and Miriam talk about, but I know you said how important it is that you find him, and--”

“A man named Rex is getting on a bus going to Great Falls,” Jennifer explained. She felt embarrassed, if only for a moment. It was rude to speak to adults to boldly, but as she saw it, she had no other choice. “I don’t know why, but he seemed really sure that Great Falls was the place to find him! And he said he’s going to kill him, because the Reich is giving a reward to whoever does it first!” It took everything she had to keep the tears from her eyes. 

Soldiers don’t cry. 

“Fiya,” A second woman entered the room, eyeing Benji’s mother with unease. “What’s going on?” 

Fiya – a strange name, Jenny thought – gave Benji a long, worried look.

“Leah is upstairs in the game room,” She told him. “Go up to her, tell her we had to go into work for a little while, and don’t any of you leave her side until we get back. Okay?” 

“You’re gonna go to Great Falls?” Benji’s face lit up with excitement. “In the Reich? Kick some Nazi ass, Ma! I can’t wait until I can come, too!” 

“Benji!” Miriam scolded this time, her eyes narrowing as Fiya failed at concealing her fond laughter. 

Fiya knelt down and adjusted the collar of Benji’s shirt. 

“Hopefully when you’re older, we won’t have to do the work we do.” 

“But I want to,” He pouted. “I want to be a soldier, too.” 

Fiya pulled him into a close hug, and Jennifer couldn’t help but feel like she was intruding on a private moment. Judging by the way Miriam cleared her throat, she felt the same way, too.

“I love you. Give your sister a hug and a kiss for me,” Fiya smiled at the way Benji’s face contorted with disgust. She pressed a kiss to his temple, and Miriam stepped forward to ruffle his dark hair.

“We’ll be back soon. And then you both will have a lot of explaining to do!” Her stare flickered warily to Jenny, and Jennifer dropped her own gaze to the floor. 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

It all seemed to happen surprisingly fast. Fiya and Miriam moved with an urgency that Jenny hadn’t anticipated, and within five minutes, they’d loaded a metal box into the cab of a pick-up truck and driven off into the neon-lit night. There were hugs and kisses and expressions in a language Jennifer didn’t understand, but she wasn’t paying much attention, anyway. Benji must’ve been right, she thought. It really was important to Fiya that they found Papa. She wondered why. Benji was her friend, though, and if the Nazis were after Papa and Fiya was after the Nazis, that surely meant Papa and Fiya were on the same side. Didn’t it? 

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Papa had said that once while on the phone with someone Jenny didn’t know. She did know, though, that she wasn’t supposed to be listening, but sometimes, eavesdropping was the only way to get information. Adults loved to keep secrets, especially from kids.

“They’re gonna go get him,” Benji told Jennifer, pulling her back into reality. She managed a forced smile and a stiff nod as she sat down in the kitchen chair.

“What’s wrong?” Benji cocked his head to the side. “You look sad.” 

“I’m just worried,” She confessed. “I hope he’s okay.” There were a million other things, too. She wondered how he’d felt about what happened to Thomas. She wondered if he’d be angry when he found out she’d shot the Nazi guard. Of course she knew that nothing would ever be the same as it was in New York, but she wondered if it could ever be close. 

“Why do you care so much?” Benji nudged her. “He’s just some guy. He helped your mom a long time ago, or whatever, and I feel like I shouldn’t ask about that--”

“No,” Jennifer interrupted. “You shouldn’t. Please.” 

Benji’s eyes narrowed in contemplation, but after a moment, he shrugged. 

“Mom and Fiya are gonna make sure nothing happens to him. They want to work together to fix the world.”

Slowly, Jennifer nodded. 

“Okay. Thanks, Benji.” 

He broke into a grin and took hold of her arm.

“Let’s go bother my sister and her friends.” 

***

 

The game room wasn’t at all what Jenny had expected. Standing in the entranceway, she took it all in.

The air swirled with silver wisps of cigarette smoke, and the steady clank of billiard balls made her jump with every strike. A radio babbled indistinctly in the corner, illuminated by a streak of moonlight. A teenage girl readied her cue and smirked at her partner, a half-gone cigarette smoldering between her lips. When Benji spotted her, he grabbed Jenny’s hand and pulled her inside.

“Leah!” He sang. “I’m telling Mom that you’re smoking!” 

Annoyed, Leah set the cue down and raised her middle finger.

“What are you doing here, Benji?” 

“Mom and Miriam went to Great Falls for work. You have to babysit us now.” 

“Us?” Leah looked at Jennifer, and suddenly, she felt self-conscious. 

“My name is Jenny,” She introduced awkwardly. “I’m new here.” 

“Hm,” Leah straightened up, but before Jennifer could read her expression, a young man turned up the radio.

“We got it!” He exclaimed, victorious. “Nazi frequency.” 

Benji’s eyes widened. “Leah, Mom said--”

“Shut up,” Stoic, Leah grabbed Benji’s arm and yanked him closer to the radio.

“If they find out you guys are tracking their frequency, they’ll--”

“They won’t find out unless scared little boys go blabbing about it,” Leah gave him a stern look. “Keep it cool, Benji. We know what we’re doing.” 

German words flowed from the dented speakers. It took a bit of twisting the dials until the sound came in clearly, and when it did, Jennifer held her breath and listened. It only took a minute before it became apparent that no one else in the room spoke German – their intense expressions, deep in thought, didn’t match the weather report coming out of the speakers. But then, a voice cut in, rushed and urgent.

_“Wir bieten eine Belohnung für Informationen zu folgenden Themen an: Das Gedenkmassaker, Terrorist John Smith, und seine Familie: Ehefrau Helen, wegen der Flucht gesucht, und Töchter Jennifer und Amy, vermutete Asoziale.”_

_We are offering a reward for information on the following: The Memorial Massacre, terrorist John Smith, and his family: wife Helen, wanted for fleeing arrest, and daughters Jennifer and Amy, suspected asocials._

“What are they saying!?” Leah kicked a chair out of frustration. “Why can’t they just speak English!? I bet they’re talking about that Nazi guy.” She turned to Benji. “I don’t know why Mom is so obsessed with finding him. You can take a man out of the Reich, but you can’t take the Reich out of a man.”

Benji looked at Jennifer as if he expected something from her, though she couldn’t imagine what it could’ve been. She’d lied rather well, for her first time doing it. She was Jenny from Canon City, not Jenny from New York. They didn’t speak German in the Neutral Zone. Did they?

“I don’t know,” Jennifer lied, again. Maybe she’d get better with practice, like playing the piano or riding a bike. There was also the fear of incriminating herself -- if they knew she was who she was, would they still trust her? Would Benji still want to be her friend? Somehow, she doubted it. “Why do you want their messages, Leah? The Nazis, I mean.” 

All eyes fell once again to Jenny. She felt suddenly self-conscious, like the first time Mother made her chemically straighten her hair. She’d liked her curls, but they weren’t German, Mother had said. Papa had curly hair, she’d pointed out, but Mother had just said, that’s different.

“Benji,” Leah barked. “Tell your friend not to ask stupid questions.” 

“Tell me yourself,” Jennifer crossed her arms and stuck out her lower lip in a pout. “You’re not very polite, Leah.”

The boy by the radio laughed, and Benji bit back a grin. Leah stood up, eyes narrowed, and crossed the floor. Pausing right before Jennifer, she crossed her arms.

“Where are you from?” 

“Canon City.” She’d practiced saying it in her brain over and over again, and by now, it felt almost natural. Strange, how easy it was to forget her own real history.

Leah cocked her head to the side. “They aren’t very polite in Canon City, either, are they?” 

Uh-oh. Fear bubbled in her gut, but it didn’t get any further than that. Her cover would only be blown if she blew it herself. She was a soldier who had switched sides. Like Papa, but reverse. Soldiers weren’t ever afraid. Neither was she. 

“Maybe you don’t want to find out,” She puffed her chest and straightened her spine, but Leah still towered over her. Benji clapped, laughing as if he’d heard the funniest joke ever spoken. It was enough to make Jennifer feel the slightest bit self conscious, but she’d never let it show.

“Knock it off, Benji,” Leah hissed. In response, he stuck out his tongue.

Footsteps came against the stairs, and Leah’s expression changed. 

“Shit,” Leah’s companion cursed, standing to her left peered through a crack in the blinds. “It’s Hector and his cronies.” 

Benji made a face caught somewhere between disgust and fear. Instinctively, Jennifer drew in closer to him. 

“Who’s Hector?” 

“He’s Leah’s age and he grew up here, but he thinks the Nazis are cool, or whatever,” Benji muttered. “He wants to be like them.”

Jaw set, Leah let out a slow sigh. “Turn off the radio, George.” 

Silence filled the room for the duration of a breath, and then the door swung open. A fair-haired, freckle-faced teen, flanked by a pair of ginger twins, strode into the palpable silence. The lead -- Hector, Jenny assumed -- wore a smile that made her uneasy.

“What’s going on up here?” He drawled, his attention snapping toward Leah. “Up to no good, Jew?” 

“What do you want, Hector?” She pushed Benji and Jennifer behind her, and George, the radio boy, put protective arm over either of their shoulders.

“Just making my rounds,” He pushed her aside and ran his finger along the billiard table’s grime. “Someone has to keep things in order around here. And your dyke parents sure as hell aren’t the folks for the job.” 

Leah took a step forward, fists clenched at her side, but George reached out and took hold of her arm.

“He isn’t worth it, Leah.” 

“Worth what?” Hector smirked. “What can you do? Just a stupid, Jewish girl. Better keep it in line, or else the Nazis might pay your asocial mom a visit. I’m about to be on their good side.” 

“Yeah,” Piped up one of the twins. “We’re going to find that traitor, Smith.” 

Hector nodded. “Yeah. Ricky, Mikey and I heard there’s a newspaper the next town over that’s printing pictures of his wife and daughters. The whole world knows what he looks like, but they’ve been a mystery until now.” 

The hairs on the back of Jenny’s neck stood up. Gooseflesh rose under the sleeves of her dress, and the next thing she knew, her white-knuckle grasp on George’s arm had made him wince.

“Piss off, Hector,” Leah rolled her eyes. “Go jack off to Herr Goebbels or something. And take Freak and Geek with you.”

“Not before you pay your dues,” Hector held out his hand. “Ten marks, and I won’t tell anybody about your Nazi radio.” 

Leah tensed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, weirdo.” 

Hector laughed. “Don’t be stupid. I have eyes everywhere. Ten marks.” 

Leah moved toward him until there was barely any space left between them. Jennifer was sure she was going to pay him, which she barely could believe. Hector kind of reminded her of Thomas, but Thomas would never be so mean! He didn’t have it in him. 

In one swift movement, Leah spit in Hector’s face and, wiping the corner of her mouth, shouted what seemed like curses in a language Jenny didn’t understand. Nonetheless, she felt a smile tug at her lips.

“Burn in hell, you creep,” Leah gave Hector a shove toward the door. One look was all it took for Ricky and Mikey to shuffle out.

“C’mon, Hector,” one of them grumbled. “We’ll be late.” 

Red in the face with rage contorting his cheeks, Hector jabbed a finger into Leah’s chest and cried, “You’ll regret this, you Jewish bitch! Watch your back!” 

“Not scared!” Leah shouted after him as he scurried into the hall. “God,” She turned toward George, Jennifer, and Benji. “What a fucking weirdo.” 

“That sounded bad, Leah,” Benji whispered. “He might really hurt you. We live in the same building; we can’t exactly avoid him.” 

Leah pulled up the leg of her trousers to reveal a knife strapped tightly to her calf. 

“Let him try. I put a scar on Gregory McAllen’s face, and I’ll put on on Hector Seville’s, too.” 

George looked at her in the way Jenny thought only gross parents in love looked at each other. It was the most obvious thing in the world, but Leah seemed to miss it. At least, she pretended to miss it. 

“Benji,” Jenny tugged on his arm. “Can I talk to you in the hall?” 

“Yeah,” He nodded, freeing himself from George’s grasp. 

“Make it quick,” Leah told him, turning her attention back to the radio. “You two should stay close. I can protect myself and Georgie here from Hector, but you’re just bait.” 

“We need to find out where Hector’s eyes are in here,” George reached along the rafters. “A camera? A spy?” 

Jennifer left their conversation behind as she and Benji slipped into the hall. The smell of tobacco was the only thing left of Hector and his friends, though Jenny still couldn’t quite shake her anxiety.

“Benji,” she whispered. “Hector said he’s going to find pictures of the Nazi man’s family?” 

Benji crossed his arms. “It was only a matter of time before somebody got ahold of the photos. I’d bet Hector wants to cash in on the Reich’s reward offer so he can pay for a move to New York to join the SS. Finding a kid is easier than finding a crazy runaway.”

Jennifer stared at the floor. “Maybe even easier than you think.” 

“What do you mean?” 

Tears filled Jennifer’s eyes. “I haven’t been honest with you, Benji. I haven’t been a good friend!” She started to cry, and Benji took hold of either of her shoulders. 

“Jenny, what’s wrong? C’mon, Hector won’t really hurt us!” 

“I don’t care about that!” Jenny sobbed. It was the first time she’d really cried since Thomas had died, since she’d shot that man in New York, since she’d fled across the country. Soldiers didn’t cry, but for a moment, she wasn’t a soldier. She was just scared. “I told you the Nazi guy was my mom’s friend, and that’s true, I think, but he was also her husband!” She choked. Eyes widening, Benji took a step back. 

“He’s your…” 

“He’s my Papa!” Jenny wept. “I didn’t want to tell you, because I was worried you wouldn’t want to be my friend anymore, that you wouldn’t trust me, but he’s my Papa, Benji, and I know he isn’t bad! And I’m not bad, either!” She turned away from him, arms wrapped around herself as sobs shook her slender frame. Benji stood so still he might as well have been part of the wall. But after awhile, Jennifer felt his arms wrap around her, and he pulled her into a tight hug.

“Thanks for telling me,” He muttered.

“You’re still my friend?” Jennifer sniffled, wiping her nose on her sleeve.

“Of course I’m still your friend,” Benji pulled away just enough to give her shoulder a gentle and awkward pat. But then, his expression turned to concern. “Leah won’t see it the same, though. And if Hector, Ricky, and Mikey recognize you, it could mean trouble.” 

Straightening her shoulders and brushing away her tears, Jennifer forced her composure to return. “Okay,” She nodded. “What do we do?” 

“I don’t know,” Benji thought for awhile, and then shook his head. “I don’t know, Jenny.” 

“Robert might have an idea!” Jennifer took his hand. “C’mon! He’s the guy my mom left to babysit me and my sister. He looks smart.” 

“What about Hector? He lives here, too!” 

“It’s okay!” Jenny promised him. “Robert will protect us!”


	13. To See, To Believe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ed reunites with an old friend as Helen finds a new purpose forced upon her. A world away, John meets a mysterious woman in a place that can't possibly exist.

Moonlight peeked in through a crack in the blinds, casting a pale white stripe across Ed’s cheek. There was a dull ache pulsating in his temples, and as he scrubbed tiredly at the sting in his eyes, everything began to come back in pieces. San Francisco, and the cloud rising up above it. Frank. Robert. Helen. Henry. The bar. The gun. The men, and the cloth. Robert.

He sat up so quickly the room spun.

“Helen,” He called to her, scurrying over to where she’d sprawled out on the floor. He gave her shoulder a shake. “Helen, get up. Are you okay?” 

She propped herself up on her elbows and blinked, dazed by the carpeted floor and light blue walls. _This doesn’t look like a prison cell._

“Where the hell are we?” She groaned, her voice strained. 

“I don’t know,” Ed offered her his hand, but she pushed it away and stood, making a move toward the window.

“I’m going to find Henry and slit his damn throat.” 

Ed winced. “Given the circumstances, I think he has the home-field advantage.”

Helen peeled back the blinds. A field, ripe with green grass, extended on until it reached a distant wooden fence. Beyond it stood a mountain, delicately peppered with pine trees and spanning up into a starry sky until Helen had lost sight of its peak.

“This is the ranch house Henry mentioned,” She declared, turning back to Ed. “I don’t understand why--”

There was a knock against the door. Helen reached for her purse – and, by extension, her gun – only to find that it had been taken. 

“He has the film!” 

“And the gun,” Ed added as he slinked closer toward the door, just in time for it to swing open. He leapt back, defensive, but it wasn’t Henry that stood in the doorway. Nor was it any of the men that had restrained and drugged them.

It was Juliana Crane. 

Ed was sure he was dreaming. He had to have been knocked out and hidden away in the trunk of a car, bound and bloodied and beaten into delusion. There was no way, he told himself. No way at all.

But then, he was hugging her, and she was hugging him. For a moment, there were no words to be said, only the comfort of a familiar silence; though his head spun with a million unanswered questions, he knew there was a time and a place. 

“Ed,” Juliana whispered after a while, her arms tightening around his neck. “How on Earth…Jesus Christ, it’s good to see you.” 

“Yeah,” Ed laughed to ward off tears. “I wish the circumstances were better.” He pulled away just enough to see her again, taking in the curve of her watery smile. He’d never thought he’d see it again. He’d never thought he’d see _her_ again. 

“Are you hurt?” Concern spread across her face. “Did they--”

“We’re alright,” Ed promised her, giving her arms a gentle squeeze. “God, Jules, what the hell are you doing here, mixed up with these people?” 

Juliana’s stare shifted from Ed to Helen, and as a bitter look of recognition passed across her face, she lowered her eyes once again and stared at her worn-out shoes.

“I could ask you the same thing.” 

Helen let out a slow breath.

“You’re the last person I expected to see,” she remarked. In response, Juliana let out a terse laugh.

“Likewise.” 

For the second time in however long it had been, Ed felt like he was just clued in on a secret everyone else seemed to already have known.

“You two know each other!?” He gawked, exasperated. “How!?” 

“I spent time in New York,” Juliana explained briefly, eyeing Helen with an air of caution. “The Nazis are looking for you, you know.” 

“Yeah,” Helen scoffed. “I kind of figured that’s why we’re here.” 

“It isn’t,” Juliana gestured for them to follow her. “C’mon.” 

When Ed set off after her, Helen grabbed his arm. “What are you doing?” 

“She’s my friend,” Ed told her, yanking his arm free from her hold. “From back home. We’ve known each other since we were kids. We can trust her.”

“People change, Ed,” she warned, hesitantly falling in line behind him.

“ _Some_ people change,” He corrected. “Not Jules, though. Besides, you’ve already gotten us kidnapped. I can’t do much worse than that.” 

“Me!?” Helen hissed. “How is this my fault? You felt the need to come along with me because you had it in your head that a woman couldn’t do something important on her own!” 

Offended, Ed shook his head. “That isn’t true at all!” 

Met only with Helen’s silence, Ed jogged to walk alongside Juliana. 

“I’m glad you’re alright,” He told her with a sideways smile that almost felt normal. “I was worried, you know?” 

Juliana smiled at him. “Like I always said, I can look out for myself. How’d you meet Helen?” 

“Oh, coincidence, really,” Ed shrugged, wondering suddenly how much he should reveal to her. What if she was somehow bound to tell whoever she answered to – presuming she answered to anyone – everything she heard? How much was incriminating? Though he hated to lie to Juliana, Helen’s skepticism had weaseled its way into his mind. “She’s staying in the same hotel as me and a friend, Robert. She said she was going to meet this Henry guy, and she needed someone to watch her little girls.” 

“Jennifer and Amy,” Juliana smiled fondly at the memory of the two curly-haired children talking through mouthfuls of pork chops and pickled cabbage. Her heart ached for them, too. She’d heard about Thomas, of course. The whole world had heard about Thomas – an Aryan-born Icarus who flew too close to the Reich’s setting son, and his father, who bore the burden of his death. 

It was the kind of thing she wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy, but then again, she didn’t have to. It had happened to him, to John Smith, whom she loathed just as much as she pitied. It was almost poetic, the way Karma worked. Except there was nothing poetic about the death of a boy barely old enough to shave. She’d killed her sister’s father so that the boy might see a future more like the past as she remembered it, only better. All for what, then? All for him to die anyway because someone, somewhere had written him off from the beginning. Hawthorne Abendson had called it fate. A delicate balance. Thomas had to die so that John Smith would return home from Berlin to find his world in pieces and scattered at his feet. John Smith had to be a man unmade, because only broken and foolish men were willing to die for a cause that may never come to fruition. Unfortunately, Smith was no fool.

The whole thing felt very Greco-Roman. 

“Where are we going?” Ed asked her. “And how the hell did you get involved with this?” 

When a figure began to take shape from the shadowed valley up ahead, one of Ed’s two questions was answered before Juliana had the chance to speak.

Trudy Walker – whom he’d only met once or twice at most – emerged with Helen’s bag slung over one shoulder and a revolver of her own sticking out of her overalls’ front pouch.

“Hey sis,” She greeted Juliana with a bright-eyed smile. “These our prisoners?” She looked at Ed long and hard, but when she tore her gaze away, Ed knew she hadn’t recognized him. 

“They aren’t prisoners, Trudy,” Juliana chastised her. “But after what happened to Thatcher, Henry seemed convinced that Mr. Abendson would want to see them.” 

Ed’s stomach ached with sudden inhibition. 

“Why’s that?” 

“It’s okay, Ed. It’s just a formality, really. The film you were carrying,” Juliana turned toward Helen. “Where did you get it?” 

“It was left at my doorstep. I don’t know.” 

An engine revved in the distance, drawing Helen’s attention up from the flowers at her feet she’d been staring at to avoid meeting Juliana’s eye. Through a cloud of kicked-up dirt and stirring dust, an old, rusted pick-up truck tore through the field. 

“There’s the boss now,” Trudy scoffed. “He can never just walk around like a normal person.” 

Juliana nudged her into silence as the truck came to a stop before them. Out of it hopped a spectacled man with tangles of grey hair peeking out from beneath a straw hat. 

“Interesting,” He looked Helen up and down. “I didn’t expect you to turn up so easily. From a person of your intelligence, Mrs. Smith, I anticipated more of a search.” 

“Who are you?” Helen crossed her arms. “How do you know who I am?” 

“Forgive me,” he held his hand out to her. “My name is Hawthorne Abendsen. I’ve known you from the films.” 

Helen stared at his hand with no intentions of actually shaking it.

“Films?” 

“Yours isn’t the only one, though it is special, as it’s the only duplicate and I fail to understand where it came from, or how it came to be at all.” He leaned against his car and stared off at the mountain reaching into the distant sky. “It’s a twin, you see? The other served a purpose within the grand plan. The one that brought you to me, though, did not.” 

“The film didn’t bring us to you,” Helen spat. “Your henchmen did. They drugged us! We were going to come here anyway. It was a deal I made. I’d come here and do whatever the hell it is you people do, and exchange, you’d protect my girls. That was incentive enough.” 

“Thatcher’s death changed things.” 

“Who the fuck is Thatcher?” Ed spoke up, though he regretted it the moments all eyes fell to him. "We sure didn't kill him!"

“A friend of mine, for starters,” Trudy glowered. “But more importantly, he is – was – a Resistance operative – a courier – from the Other World, and now that the Nazis know about him, they’re going to try to weasel their way into every other universe, too.” 

“Slow down,” Helen paused. “All this talk of other worlds, universes, I need some clarification.” 

“What’s there to clarify?” Abendsen asked. “They exist. That’s all.”

“But how!?” 

Abendsen paced before them, tucking his hands behind his back.

“How is it that our universe exists?” He asked, and when Helen stammered for a reply she didn’t have, he smiled. “Some might say there’s a god, or maybe multiple gods, sitting on some royal and cosmic throne above the heavens. Others might argue we’re all an accident of science, made up of stardust and divine light. Accidental, yes. But singular? Hardly. The question, dear, is hardly how, but rather why. Do you believe in fate?” 

Ed nodded before he could help himself, and Abendsen’s stare leapt toward him.

“You do. What’s your name?” 

“Ed,” He choked out through a sudden clutch of anxiety. “Ed McCarthy.” 

“Well, Ed McCarthy, fate is a fluid thing. We hold in our hands the key to a brighter future,” When Trudy passed him the satchel, he extracted the film and held it up to the light. “This is the key. But where is the door?” He paused, turning his attention back to Helen. “Your boy – a terrible tragedy. My condolences.” 

Helen squared her shoulders and blinked back the moisture in her eyes. Years of social conditioning had taught her to say thank you, but in what felt to her like an act of rebellion, she said nothing at all.

“Nonetheless!” He continued on, unaffected by her silence. “Your boy made a choice that day, and so did your…he isn’t quite your husband, is he? John Smith. He’s more than that and less than that all at once,” There was a glint in his eye that made Helen uneasy. He spoke as though he was omniscient, all-seeing. Helen blamed the films. She’d seen for herself what they are, and maybe they really were more than clever deceptions. She’d seen herself, and so it only made sense that Abendsen had seen her, too. “Whatever he is to you, and whatever he isn’t to us, he made a choice, and that choice has changed fate once again.”

“The Reich is going to fall,” Juliana declared. “We’ve seen it in the films. But there are two people that need to be protected at all costs, because in every reality in which they die, the rebellion fails and the Reich blows everything east of Great Falls right off the map.” 

“Two people,” Abendsen repeated. “One: John Smith. His face has become the face of insurrection all around the world. Copy-cat attacks have claimed the lives of an estimated 1,000 Nazi officials and twice as many civilians. You see, for a man of his stature to commit an act such as the Memorial Massacre…it’s unprecedented and inspiring.” 

“Who’s the second person?” Helen asked, glancing between Juliana and Abendsen. Juliana shifted uncomfortably, and with an apologetic look, she took a breath.

“Jenny,” She stated.

“Jenny?” Helen’s breathless reply came with a lapse in her composure. Fear hit first, and then sadness, and finally, the anger with which she turned to Abendsen. “She’s just a little girl, what the fuck do you--”

“She’s a very important little girl,” Abendsen shrugged. “And a very brave one. Very much the combination of her mother’s strength of mind and her father’s reckless impulsivity.”

“We don’t know why, yet,” Juliana reached out to put a hand on Helen’s shoulder. “But Jennifer will do something that helps save the world.”

“But if the Nazis catch up to us,” Helen shuddered at the thought. “They’ll kill her and Amy both…they...they think there’s the same sickness that Thomas had in them, too…” Her lip quivered, and it was only Juliana’s touch that kept her grounded. 

“We need to make sure that doesn’t happen, then,” Trudy interjected. “Where’s the kid now?” 

“She’s safe with my…” Ed paused, wondering what exactly Robert was to him. His partner? His lover? His companion? All of the above and so much more, he thought. But for reasons unknown to him, he only said, “…my friend.” Somehow, he felt guilty for reducing the man that made it all worthwhile to _friend._

“Where?” 

“The hotel in Helena,” Helen said. “Downtown, just a few blocks away from Henry’s bar. Room 113.” 

“I’ll go,” Juliana spoke up before Abendsen could. “She knows me. Not well, but I’m not a stranger, either.” 

“I’ll come, too,” Ed smiled at the thought of having some time alone to talk to Juliana about the time they’d lost. “Robert will trust me.”

“Why not me?” Indignant, Helen crossed her arms. “I’m only her goddamn mother!” 

“You’re needed here,” Abendsen turned toward the cottage. “I’ve heard rumors that before you were reduced to the Reichsfrau with a pretty face, you – along with Mr. Smith – were both gifted tinkerers.” 

Helen almost laughed. “We fixed things for pocket change after the Crash,” She shook her head. “That’s all.”

“Well,” Abendsen shrugged. “I have things that need fixed. And the payoff will be better than pocket change.” 

“I don’t want your fucking money.” 

“Good,” Abendsen smiled jovially. “Because I don’t have any. Come along.” 

He started off toward the shack, and with a sigh, Helen followed. With Trudy armed at her back, she felt a little like she was a cow being led to slaughter. She was aware – almost painstakingly – of her surroundings, from the gentle breeze across her skin to the distance between the cottage and the nearest road. No one would hear the shots ring out; to the cars passing by on a distant highway, life would be just as it always was. She felt far away from the world and even further from herself. Her little girls, a lifetime away. Her brave boy, gone for years despite her having held him barely a week ago. John, a perfect stranger with his headshot in the news. 

It astounded her how much things had changed, but what astounded her most was that she felt no fear. She should’ve been terrified – normally, she would’ve been – but she’d been hardened by what it felt like to lose. Part of her hoped almost desperately that what Abendsen said was true – that worlds existed beyond the Reich’s hellish ridge. She took solace in the smallness she felt; in the cold, hard insignificance; and in the delicate postulation that somewhere, somehow, she was happy. 

***

 

“Good morning, Mr. Smith,” 

John opened his eyes to find that the train car’s rusted ceiling had vanished. In its place stood a bright blue sky, stark in contrast against the silvery-white of puffy, cotton-like clouds.

He sat up so quickly that the world around him, strange and unlike it should’ve been, began to spin. His breath caught in his throat, seized by the clutch of panic. 

Erich? Joe? Where are they? He thought of the night before, the feeling of a lover’s tender kiss, and he longed to feel it again.

“Hey,” An elderly, dark-skinned woman put a hand on his shoulder. “Relax. Everything is as it should be.” 

“Who the fuck are you?” He tore his arm away from her touch. “Where am I? I don’t…” He trailed off as he clambered to his feet, taking a sweeping look at the city unfurling around him. Picturesque streets, lined with trees draped in the colors of autumn. A grassy lawn stretched out across the street, and children ran toward a vendor selling red balloons. White buildings sprouted up like flowers, and just beyond the trees, an elegantly pointed monument kissed the sky. 

“No,” John turned back toward the strange woman, and immediately, he resented her smile. “This…this isn’t possible!” He let out a manic laugh. “Washington was destroyed!”

“Was it?” She kicked at the sand beneath their feet, tucking her hands into the pockets of her a-line dress.

“Yes!” John cried. “Yes! I watched it go up in smoke on December eleventh, 1945 – exactly one month before my son was born – and I…I…everyone I knew died here,” He turned around, standing in the shadow of the National Monument. In felt haunting, like a hundred ghosts blocking out the daylight. The guilt that had come to him that night was back; he should’ve died here, too. Over his shoulder, he could almost feel the presence of the Potomac River, and beyond it, Pentagon City. It should’ve been his gravesite. 

“Poor boy,” The woman clicked her teeth and shook her head. “It’s a symptom of male arrogance, to think that you know everything so soundly.” 

“I do know,” John whispered desperately, brought to his knees by the weight of his sudden doubt. He touched the sand that would dance through the air to warn of a coming storm. It used to sting his bare arms as he and his fellow soldiers raced through the streets with their uniform sleeves cuffed up to their elbows. Summer in the shadows cast by Capitol Hill was like a dream for him – the poor shoeshine boy from nowhere special – and now as he peered at it again for the first time in almost seventeen years, he realized that it must’ve been exactly that: A dream.

“What is it that you know?” She knelt down beside him. “Or rather, think you know?” 

“I know that I know that the nuclear fallout from that bomb in ’45 made this place untouchable for at least a century,” He sucked in a sharp breath. “From here to Arlington County…it’s all just dust. I saw it. I tried to go back, once, but they’d walled it off with these…these grand, towering bits of stone. But there were…there were places in the stone that you…you could see through. Cracks, I mean, and I looked through it and you know what I saw? Nothing. I’d bet there are silhouettes of people turned to dust by a blinding light, forever burned into that same fucking statue!” He pointed toward the monument, and only as he looked up, his cheeks streaked with tears, was he made aware of the way people passed them by as if they were just part of the landscape. Couldn’t they see him? 

“They don't notice us?” 

“It’s safer that way.” 

“I don’t…”

“You talk too much,” The woman grabbed his bicep and pulled him up. “You would learn much more if you’d listen, sometimes, too.” 

“Listen? I don’t…I don’t--”

She pressed her index finger against her lips.

“Just listen, Mr. Smith.” 

He wished for silence, but instead, he was met with sounds he’d tried to forget, not because they were the echoes of a distant nightmare, but rather because they were the gentle, whispered nothings of what he thought might’ve someday become happiness. Chattering voices and chirruping birds, the dull hiss of tires against pavement, the squawk of a bus’s rusted brakes…he remembered it all. Oh, how he'd taken it for granted!

A man on the corner was selling papers. John almost expected to see his own face; He knew the Reich was looking for him. But this wasn't the Reich. He wasn't himself.

“Missiles in Cuba!” cried the newsboy, earning the attention of a young couple walking past. 

John approached the stand with caution. He felt out of place, as if the moment someone saw him, he’d open his eyes and be staring down the barrel of a gun. He glanced back at the woman, and she nodded him on. 

Just as he’d expected, the stranger was none the wiser to his presence as he leaned in close, taking a look at the paper’s front page.

“October 22, 1962,” He read, puzzled. “President Kennedy announces presence of ballistic missiles in Cuba.”

“No matter what world you look at, people are always trying to blow each other up.” The woman sighed. “We never do learn from our mistakes, do we?” 

“I don’t understand,” He turned back toward her. “I’ve listened, like you said, and I understand less.” 

“You’re so obsessed with understanding,” She accused, crossing her arms. “If you’d stop trying to force things to make sense within the context of your severely limited worldview, you might just find that it’s all perfectly feasible.” 

“Feasible!?” John laughed. “Feasible? I’m standing in a city I know to be destroyed. I’m reading a newspaper that calls a man I’ve never heard of the president, but I know there’s no president. There is – was – a führer, but now there isn’t. That’s feasible!?” 

“Mr. Smith,” She shook her head. “You’re missing my point. You know the city is gone. You’ve never heard of president Kennedy. You remember a führer. Have you ever considered that there’s more people in this life than only you?” 

Defeated and at a loss for words, John sat back down.

“Can you at least tell me your name?” He glanced up at the woman, his expression weighed down with gloom. “Somehow, you know mine.” 

“My name is Ella Montgomery,” She sat down beside him once again. “And this is the world as it would’ve been. As it could’ve been, if the Nazis hadn’t won.” 

John’s eyes widened with a sudden burst of realization. 

“The films!” 

Proudly, Ella nodded. “Now you’re starting to see.” 

“I thought they were just…just clever deceptions.” 

“What is life, if not just a clever deception?” There was something playful about Ella’s words; she’d infused them with a depth she clearly didn’t feel, an exaggerated version of some distant philosophical musing.

“Ms. Montgomery,” John stood up. “I saw a film in which my wife and children were…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it, but somehow, Ella understood nonetheless.

“Don’t worry,” She told him. “There are more worlds than yours, this one, and that one. It’s just one of an infinite number of possible outcomes. It’s what would’ve happened if you hadn’t blown up that car, and if your daughter hadn’t killed that man--”

“Wait,” John held up a hand to stop her. “My daughter did _what_?” 

“A Nazi agent. He came to kill them, as you’d seen in the film that was relayed to us, that we then relayed to you. But Jennifer had something else in mind.” Ella lifted a skeptical brow. “I’d assumed you’d been in contact with Helen by now.” 

John shook his head, speechless. He knew what it felt like to take a life, and it was something he’d always silently hoped it was something his children would never have to feel. Thomas was his primary concern – the boy wanted to go to war! But Jennifer? 

He wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his sweater. “My god, she’s just a little girl.” 

“You underestimate the courage and strength of little girls,” Ella smiled at him. “Children understand things much better than adults, sometimes. They still believe in magic, and if they believe in magic, they believe in that possibilities that we adults have long since ruled out. Like happiness. And revolution,” She gave his arm a gentle pat. “Your Jennifer might be a little girl, but she is not _just_ anything.” 

With a shuddering breath, John managed a stiff nod.

“Why am I here?” 

Ella gestured for John to follow her as she made her way toward the base of the monument. Glancing nervously behind him, John hesitantly jogged off after her.

“How do you know who I am?” 

“I’m a film courier,” Ella unzipped her jacket to reveal a film tucked away inside. She pulled it out and extended it out to him. “And now, you are, too. You can’t tell anyone, though. Not Erich. Not Helen.” 

Firmly, John shook his head. “Absolutely not. I’m in enough trouble already, thanks.” 

Ella’s expression soured. “You don’t get a choice, Mr. Smith. That film needs to get to Henry Watanabe. You’re going there anyway, aren’t you?” 

“There’s a good chance we won’t even make it, Ms. Montgomery,” John snorted. “The whole Reich wants me dead.” 

“You’ll make it,” She smiled. “Trust an old, wise woman’s words, Mr. Smith. You’ll make it.” 

“What’s on it? The film, I mean. What does it show?” 

“The game plan,” She urged the film toward him. “It’s how we’re going to save the world. Your world.” 

“Yeah?” John scoffed. “If you think that world is worth saving, you’ve never seen it. It takes everything. One by one, every-fucking-thing you love, it’s gone. I wish it was like this. Like before. It wasn’t perfect – we were as poor as they come, but we were happy. I want that back.”

Ella laughed, and when John turned to her with a look of mild offence, she gestured toward a crowd of African students gathering on the steps of the National Monument. 

“You know what they’re protesting for?” She asked him. “They’re protesting because in the world you want back, they can’t ride a bus or drink from a water fountain without worrying about getting the life beat out of them. Because their schools don’t have any money or resources. Because the government is putting drugs in their communities and then arresting their neighbors, parents, siblings, lovers. Because the police don’t protect them. This world sets them up to fail, too. It’s just less blatant, that’s all.” 

Uncomfortable, John stared straight ahead. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” 

“Of course you didn’t. Most white folks in 1962 don’t know. Or care.” It wasn’t meant to sound accusatory, and somehow, it didn’t. Tragically, she was right. “This film, Mr. Smith, isn’t going to make your world look like this one again. It’s going to make it better than this one. You want redemption? You want to right your wrongs? There sure are a lot of them to right, and--”

“Yeah, I get it,” John cleared his throat, and reluctantly, he took the film from her. After stuffing it into his inside pocket, he paused at the base of the monument. The last time he’d been here, he thought, it was when he’d asked Helen to marry him. They’d spent the day out seeing what the city had to offer, towering museums cherry blossoms in bloom, with him and his military greens and her in her favorite yellow dress. 

He reached out to touch the monument’s cool stone, and with his eyes squeezed shut, he felt eighteen again. Eighteen, a week before he was slated to leave for the South Pacific, down on his knees before his lifelong friend and holding out a ring he’d pawned his late father’s pocket watch to buy.

“It can get addictive,” Ella took his hand in hers, forcing him away from the stone. “The past. Remembering. It’s easy to do that, here. You can’t let it get to you. Trust me. The longer you stay here, the worse it gets. You don’t only see what could’ve been, but you feel it, too. Don’t let yourself feel it, John.” 

Stiffly, John pulled away from the wall and took in a deep breath to regain his composure. 

“Okay,” He cleared his throat. “Okay. I…I’ll get the film to Henry. Then what?” 

“Henry will know what to do.” 

“Can I ask you something else?” 

Ella looked up, taken aback by the vulnerability plain to see on John’s face. He wasn’t like she thought he would be.

“Sure.” 

“In this world,” John crossed his arms over his chest. “Is my son alive?” 

“Mr. Smith…” Ella warned. “I told you, don’t let yourself feel it.” 

“Is he?” John’s voice cracked. “Is he alive? Is he happy? Please, Ms. Montgomery, I have to know that somewhere, he’s okay, untouched by his father’s mistakes.” 

Ella squared her shoulders and began to walk away with her back to the setting sun.

“Your boy is his father’s son,” She gave a meager shrug. “But he is not his father’s sin.” 

A gust of wind kicked up sand, and John held his arm in front of his face to shield his eyes from the swirling particulate. When he lowered his hand, Ella was gone. 

He spun around, searching for her face through a crowd of strangers. Standing there, alone and unseen in a city that felt like it came straight from a photograph, he clutched the film closer to his side and sat down with his back pressed against the monument. The sun had cast the sky in shades of orange, and the beauty of it all stole the breath from John’s lungs. He couldn’t cry anymore, even if he’d wanted to. He’d cried himself all out of tears, but there was something new about the way grief churned his stomach at the thought of Thomas being alive. Maybe here, he was looking up at the same clouds, making shapes out of nothingness just like they’d used to do.

He touched the ground, and it felt real. He wanted to believe in it; he wanted to believe in Ella and he wanted to believe in the transformative power of the film he carried in his coat. He wanted to believe in this strange, new world that wasn’t really new at all. It was just the Old World reinvented, and in it, he felt real, too.

“You have to get back, Mr. Smith.” 

John jumped at the sound of Ella’s voice. When he opened his eyes, she was there again. 

“Where were you?” 

“You need to get back to your world to get that film to Henry.” 

“Ella, I--”

“You’re feeling too much, Mr. Smith,” She crouched before him. “It’ll drive you mad. Besides, if Erich and Joe wake up and you aren’t there, what will they think? That you’ve jumped the train? That wouldn’t be uncharacteristic of you, after all.” 

John’s eyes narrowed into a glare. 

“How do I get back?” 

“You just have to go to sleep.” 

John laughed. “Yeah. I haven’t done that with any degree of success for at least a week.” 

“I thought you’d say that.” 

Without missing a beat, Ella reached into her purse, and the next thing John knew, there was something sharp and cold being pressed into the side of his neck. Gasping, he reached up for Ella’s wrist, but whatever was in the syringe had left him paralyzed. His limbs trembled, and then stilled. He thought briefly of Dr. Adler – was this what he’d felt like when John had killed him in his car? 

“Sleep,” Ella touched his cheek in a way that felt soothing and almost maternal. His eyes slipped shut, and he was falling into a raging sea of darkness. It filled his lungs and burned like saltwater. 

_Who saved you?_

_Do you love him?_

He sat up with a straggled gasp to find that the scenic, trancelike city had surrendered itself to the train car’s grey walls. Sunlight poured in from the open-faced side, and Erich and Joe’s sleeping figures rose and fell with every breath they took. John felt his coat pocket, praying that it would be empty and prove that the whole thing had been just another nightmare. But sure enough, he felt it – the cold, metal cylinder similar to the one he’d kept in his bag, yet different in a way that made it otherworldly.

He didn’t understand. It seemed like he’d traveled lightyears in the time it took to blink an eye. It didn’t feel possible, but like Ella had said, maybe that was part of the point.

He crawled over toward Erich and curled into his side. Instinctively, Erich wrapped a sleepy arm around his shoulders, and John took solace in the way his warmth consumed him. He clutched Erich close and the film even closer, and when he felt Erich stir, he did is best to feign sleep. Erich’s eyes lingered on him, and then he felt a gentle hand tuck a strand of hair back behind his ear. There was no fooling him.

“You alright?” 

“Mhmm,” John nodded, catching Erich’s hand in his own. Maybe it was whatever Ella had stuck him with, or maybe it was his proximity to Erich Raeder, but either way, he experienced a sudden and inescapable wave of calm. “I’m fine,” He assured him. “Everything is going to be fine.”


	14. In Plain Sight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Helen and Trudy work toward a crucial discovery while John, Erich, and Joe face a close call that puts them face-to-face with a strange new pair of allies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELL SEASON 3 KILLED ME. If you've seen it, you can probably guess why haha. If not, what are you waiting for?! No spoilers ahead, so don't worry! As always, kudos and comments are greatly appreciated :)

Robert didn’t sign up for this.

No, all he wanted was to survive. That was it. The bare minimum. And he got it, technically, which is more than he could say about Frank Frink. For all he knew, the bastard was probably blown to bits somewhere between San Francisco and Hell. He wouldn’t have cared – or even really thought about it – had it not been for Ed, who lit the same stout candle every night. Votive, he called it. Righteous. Precatory. For the soul of a man Robert was sure never had one to begin with. But, such is life.

And life, he was granted. Life, and then some, and included in that then some was some crazy lady from the East Coast and her wayward brats. One of which just so happened to be missing. The other hadn’t spoken since she’d woken up. 

“So,” Robert looked out the window, hoping he could see her thin-framed silhouette somewhere in the shadows cast down by neon rays. But, alas. Jennifer Smith was nowhere in sight. “If you were your sister, where would you go?” 

Amy looked at him. That’s all she did. Looked at him. With big, brown eyes and a look as plain as the stale wheat bread they’d had for breakfast.

“Alright,” Robert cleared his throat. “You aren’t very helpful, are you?” He paused. Still, Amy said nothing. “You know, stranger danger doesn’t apply to the people your mother appoints as your babysitters.” 

Robert picked up the letter Jennifer had left and turned it over in his hands. She’d made a friend? Was that what kids these days were doing? Making friends with strangers? He huffed. No wonder things had become so bad.

“I guess we have to go out and locate your wayward sibling,” He stepped toward the door. When Amy didn’t follow him, he groaned. 

“Promptly, please,” He tapped his watch. “The time is of the essence, and whatnot.” 

Nothing. No movement. No words. Robert was beginning to wonder what exactly he’d done in a past life to deserve this. Surely it was nothing he’d done in this life. His only crime was wanting normalcy.

He crossed his arms and thought for a moment. He could leave alone, find Jennifer, and then return to find Amy gone. But then, at least Jennifer, with her apparent restlessness, would accompany him to find Amy. He shook the idea out of his head. As strange and as silent as she might’ve been, and as much as Robert wished he wasn’t responsible for her wellbeing, he knew he couldn’t leave a little girl unprotected in a place like this. 

For a moment – a terrible, short-lived moment – Robert saw a younger version of himself reflected in the child’s saucer-like eyes. He remembered what it was like to feel small in a big, big world, to feel afraid in the midst of something larger than life itself. 

He quickly brushed the thoughts aside. Now wasn’t the time. He had a job to do, whether he liked it or not.

“Fine,” He turned toward Amy once again. “If you aren’t going to come willingly, I suppose I’ll have to assert my clear authority as an adult and carry you myself. You can’t possibly weigh more than twenty-three kilograms. I once lifted a crate of fine antiques that weighed nearly fifty.” He gave her a stern look, one that she quickly returned. “This is your last opportunity to come of your own free will.” 

The corners of her lips twitched in a way that might’ve indicated anger or amusement – it was hard to tell. Robert could barely read people, let alone children!

Just as he was moving to lift her, the door swung open and Jennifer rushed in, flanked by some dirty-faced rascal.

“You!” Robert hissed. “What were you thinking, young lady!? Had your mother returned to find you gone, what would I have said to her?!” 

“We’re fine, Mr. Robert, really!” Jenny insisted. 

Robert’s reluctant stare fell to the little boy. “We?” 

“I’m Benji,” He waved pleasantly.

“I don’t care,” Robert dismissed. “My job is to make sure you and Ms. Mime over there stay put until your mother returns.” He gestured to Jenny, and then to Amy, and then to the window for reasons unknown to him. Somewhere in that city, the girls’ wild-eyed mother had dragged his Ed into dark corners and back alleys, surely, and for all he knew, they’d never return. The thought put a pit in his stomach, and so he swallowed hard and shook it out of his head. 

“Mr. Robert, there’s a guy in this building, and he’s a Nazi!” Benji lowered his voice. “And he’s got a source that’s gonna give him pictures of the Nazi traitor--”

“--my papa,” Jenny interjected.

“Yeah, her papa, and her, her sister, and her mom!” 

“And if that happens, our cover is all blown up!” 

Robert sat on the bed and dropped his head into his hands. Yeah, he definitely didn’t sign up for this.

“What do you suppose we do, Jennifer?” 

“I was hoping you’d have an idea,” Jennifer sat beside him, only letting herself look at Amy for a brief moment. If she looked too long, she’d worry, and if she worried, she’d lose her focus. And if a soldier lost her focus, she might lose the war.

“Me!?” Robert gaped. “Why on Earth would I have an idea!?” 

“Because you’re an adult,” Benji shrugged.

“That means nothing!” 

Jennifer placed a hand on either of his shoulders and gave a gentle squeeze. She’d seen Mama do that to Papa when he was upset -- vice versa, too -- and it always seemed to bring calm. But Robert pulled away, glaring at her.

“What are you up to?” 

“Just trying to help you relax! To comfort you!” 

“Comfort?” Robert scoffed. “I’d be more relaxed in a girdle and a-line dress!” A look came over his face, and then he smiled. “That gives me an idea.” 

Jennifer grinned, feeling as though she’d accomplished something in making Robert smile. 

“So,” He stood up. “We can’t hide, because there’s no way Ed and your mother will find us again if we do. So we have to hide you in plain sight. Young man,” He turned to Benji. “You two are approximately the same size. Might we borrow an outfit?” He glanced over at Amy and frowned. “Maybe two outfits.” 

“Oh, I get it!” Benji nodded. “Yeah! Hector’s gonna be looking for the Nazi’s daughters, but if he sees two boys, he won’t think anything of it!” 

“He already saw me, though,” Jennifer reminded him. 

“So? We’ll tell him the girl I was with skipped town. Throw him off the trail!” 

Grinning, Jennifer took Benji’s arm. “Alright, then what are we waiting for? Let’s do it!” She took Amy’s hand and beckoned for Robert to follow them. “See, Mr. Robert? I told you you’d think of something good!” 

“You didn’t tell me that,” Robert griped. “But what can I say? Some of us are just idea people.” 

 

***

It wasn’t that Jennifer didn’t think it would work. It was just that she didn’t think it would work so well. 

With a blue-striped button-down shirt tucked into a pair of grey shorts, held together with a slick black belt, ankle socks and aged saddle shoes, she barely recognized herself in the mirror. The only thing left to remind her of who she’d been before came in the form of her long brunette waves, pulled back into a ponytail. Running a hand through her hair, she frowned.

“Benji, do you have scissors?” 

Benji poked his head out of his closet, where he was digging around for something small enough to fit Amy. 

“Why?” 

Not taking her eyes off her reflection, Jenny took a breath. “Mother never let me cut my hair. She said it would make it frizzy and inelegant.” 

“Well,” Benji emerged with an armful of clothes. “You don’t have to cut it. We can put it under a hat. I think I have a hat here, somewhere!” 

“No,” Jenny insisted. “I want to cut it. We’re going to commit to this. Will you help me?” 

“Uh, yeah,” Benji set down Amy’s selection -- a red collared shirt that hadn’t fit him in ages, grey shorts, and running shoes -- and rushed into his mother’s office. When he returned, he held a pair of scissors.

“What do I do?” 

“Cut off the ponytail.”

He lined up the scissors and glanced up at the image of himself and Jenny in the mirror. “You sure?” 

“Yes, Benji, just do it!” 

Jennifer shut her eyes, opening them again only after she’d heard a faint snip and a dull thud.

A smile spread across her lips. “Hector won’t ever recognize me now!” She ran her fingers through the short curls bouncing to life, pleasantly shocked at how smooth they felt between her fingers. “Mama will be so surprised!” 

“You aren’t upset?” Benji picked up her discarded ponytail and held it at arm’s length, as if he was almost sure it would spring to life and bite him. “About your hair, I mean.”

Jennifer shrugged. “It’ll grow back.” She turned away from the mirror. “Did you find something for Amy?” 

“Uh, yeah,” Benji gathered his armful and offered a sheepish smile. “It’s still gonna look silly on her, but lots of folks wear clothes that look silly. Sometimes, it’s all they have. It’ll look like she’s got your hand-me-downs.” 

“Convincing,” Jennifer collected her discarded dress and led Benji out into the main room, where Robert sat waiting. At the sight of her disguise, his eyes widened.

“I am a genius. You're unrecognizable.” 

“Alright, Amy!” Jennifer took her sister’s hand. “We’re going to play a game. We’ll put on these clothes, give you a little haircut, and then we’ll call each other new names.” She grinned. “We’re playing make pretend.” 

For the first time, Robert saw the corners of Amy’s lips curve into what might be considered a smile. She followed Jennifer into Benji’s bedroom, and Benji vanished into the bathroom. Left alone, Robert finally had the time to think. And oh, he thought about everything. 

Ed, mainly, and the way he missed the constant warmth of his sweaty, clammy palms. He wondered where he was, now, and if he was afraid. Ed was the kind of man who was unable to stay in the present -- he was always afraid of something that hadn’t happened yet, but in the same breath, he never let it show. That, Robert thought, was what made him brave. Not the absence of fear, but the mastery of it. It was one of many things Robert had admired about him, secretly and silently at first, then loudly, adoringly. And now, silent once again.

There was irony hidden somewhere beneath an ache, buried in sadness and sheathed in worry. A vicious cycle, he thought. Vicious, indeed.

Jennifer and Amy returned, and moments later, Benji did, too. Amy’s hair, cut a bit longer than Jenny’s, framed the child’s rosey cheeks in a way that made her look younger. Or, maybe it was the way the fabric fell like a sheet over her tiny shoulders. Nonetheless, she looked nothing like the little girl the Nazis might be coming for, and that was the intention, after all.

“We’ve decided on our pretend names,” Jennifer declared. “I’m going to be Jack. It starts with the same letter as Jennifer.” _And, it’s like Papa. Jack and John can be the same, sometimes,_ she wanted to add, but decided it would be her secret connection him, like the necklace Mama wore under her shirts -- the one he’d given her when they were kids. She used to love to tell the story, before things changed.

“Amy said she’ll be Tom,” Jenny’s voice tightened. “She said she won’t ever forget, that way.” 

“I like it,” Benji grinned. “Jack and Tom. Hector won’t suspect a thing!” 

***

Helen worked well into morning, but oddly, she didn’t realize the sun had come up. She’d absorbed herself into her assignment, because the busier she was, the less time she had to think and worry. It all came down to whether or not she trusted Juliana, Ed, and even Robert, whom she’d left to care for her girls. She worried her stomach into knots, and the worst part was that she couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Except work. Faster, faster, and faster, until she was done. 

She’d been told it was important that she repaired whatever Trudy gave to her, which was becoming more and more challenging with every gadget. 

At first, she knew what she was working with. Engines. Motors. Projectors. Telephones. Things she’d fixed before, after the Crash. The yard beyond her tiny shed was a graveyard for old cars, long abandon, and she was sure she could build half a world with what Abendsen had out there. But then, the objects became more obscure: Strange looking funnels and chrome cylinders with missing washers and slots for batteries. Cubes with glass screens and wires inside that she was sure weren’t bombs, but what else could they be? They seemed almost like television sets, but smaller. More complex. She’d been working on the same one for hours, and still, it escaped her.

“Breakfast time,” Trudy’s voice startled her, and she dropped a screwdriver. Trudy picked it up for her, placing it and a slice of toast on the table beside her. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” 

“You didn’t,” Helen took the tool back, but barely seemed to notice the toast.

“You’re efficient,” Trudy peered over her shoulder. “How’d you get so good at fixing stuff?” 

Wiping sweat from her brow, Helen shrugged. “You get inventive when your options are starve or do something to prevent it. I couldn’t mine coal, I was no good at teaching, and the thought of working for someone else never sat well with me.” 

“Speaking of starving,” Trudy pushed the toast toward her. “You need to take a break.” 

“How can I take a break when I don’t even know what I’m fixing?” 

Trudy quirked a brow. “Those things aren’t related.” 

“Tell me what I’m doing, here?” 

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” 

“I’m so sick of hearing that!” Helen slammed her hands into the table, jolting its contents with a metallic clang. “Who are you to tell me what I’ll believe?” 

“Fine,” Trudy crossed her arms. “You’re repairing the individual elements of a synthetic portal to the Other World, which I destroyed when the Nazis were closing in. But now, I need it again. See, some people can travel without portals. No one knows why, yet. Other people have found natural portals, but I’ve done neither, so until I can figure out why, we need a mechanical means of passing between worlds.” 

Helen bit the inside of her cheek. Of course she didn’t believe it. But part of her wanted to. It was like a belief in God -- it made no rational sense, but the thought of something larger, something beyond the farthest hills and horizons, it brought her hope. And hope was something she hadn’t felt in a long, long time. 

“Fine,” Helen sighed. “A portal. Does it have to do with the films?” 

“Maybe. I don’t know. All I know is that the Nazis are going to figure it out, soon, and if we don’t figure it out first, we lose. And if we lose, it’s all over for you, your weird, freaky husband, your kids, my sister, everyone.” 

Helen took a bite of her toast for the sake of having something to do except stare straight ahead. 

“I want to see it. The Other World.” 

Trudy tensed. 

“Why? Because seeing is believing?” 

Helen shook her head. “No. Can’t I just want something without having a reason?” 

“Want as much as you’d like,” Trudy took a seat on a stool beside her. “You can’t get anywhere if this thing isn’t fixed.” 

“You could at least help me, since you’re the one who broke it.” 

“Yeah, right. I don’t know anything about this stuff.” 

“I’ll teach you. Hand me the wire cutters.” 

Reluctantly, Trudy inched closer and passed Helen the toolbox. They worked in silence for a bit, but then Helen swallowed hard and turned to face her new companion. 

“Why can some people travel without this thing, and others can’t?” 

Trudy rolled her eyes. “Why do the sand dunes in Death Valley hum when the wind blows? Why does the water that falls into that hole at Devil’s Kettle Falls vanish? Why does ball lightning happen? Life is weird, Helen,” she let out a sigh. “We believe that we’ve mastered nature; We’ve built cities, harvested the power of the sun and the wind, created medicines to fight off diseases, but still, that belief is wrong. Nature is more than landscape, elements, and germs. We don’t control it. It controls us.” 

Helen scoffed. “That’s an elaborate way to say you have no idea what you’re doing here. Give some electrical tape.”

Trudy laughed, though her expression was far from happy. “I guess so, yeah.” She rummaged around in a drawer until she found what looked like the right thing, rolling it over into Helen’s waiting hands. 

“What about the natural portals you mentioned?” She went to work taping a seal around a severed wire. “Tell me about those?” 

“There isn’t much to tell,” Trudy shrugged. “Why are you taping those wires?” 

“Because the wires had a tear. It’s small, but this’ll insulate and help conduct the electricity better,” She took a bite of her toast. “Surely, Trudy, you have to know something about the portals. How did they get there?” 

“Well, we’re pretty sure they aren’t magic or anything. They’re just relics of an ancient civilization. Another thing we assume is that we get smarter as a species as time goes on, but we really just get more arrogant. Whoever built them hundreds, maybe even thousands of years ago, they were brilliant, and they just...hid them in plain sight. All around. Everywhere. Around cave fronts and bodies of water, for example, where whatever separates worlds is at its weakest,” Trudy seemed animated, finally, discussing things Helen wouldn’t have believed a month ago. “Where do you think all those missing boats and planes in the Bermuda triangle go?”

Helen quirked a brow. “The Other World?” 

“Maybe. Why not, right?” 

“There’s so many parts, here,” Helen glanced around the room -- a small, but packed shed, with a single, cluttered counter and filled shelves perched on the wall. “I have an idea.” 

“Uh-oh,” Trudy groaned.

“Oh, relax,” Helen stood up and dug around through a slew of haphazard parts. “Before the war, there was a man who commissioned John and I to build a device that would help him detect thunderstorms. He was rich, and he controlled the mining operations in all of Arlington County, and if it stormed, things got more dangerous for the miners because of thunder’s radial acoustic shock and also the potential for lightening strikes and flooding.”

“Uh, okay,” Trudy shrugged. “So?” 

“So,” Helen went on. “We did it, and we built this little thing that could measure the amount of electricity in the air. It could also detect man-made things that gave off electricity, like streetcar lines.”

“Still don’t know where you’re going with this, Helen, but it seems like you guys should’ve been rich or something with an invention like that.” 

Helen scoffed. “We would’ve been, if he hadn’t taken the stupid thing and made it like he’d invented it himself. It was more believable that he’d done it; Who do you think the public would believed? A wealthy businessman, or a silly woman and a teenage _mischling_? But, I digress,” Helen tossed a bunch of parts down onto the counter space in front of her. “My point is that this thing was pretty simple to make, using a set of regulators from a car’s fuse box -- which you actually have, here -- a battery, some pins, wires, and a Hall chip, which you can find in the part of a car that controls fuel injection.” 

Trudy gaped. There were a few things she wanted to ask about, mainly the implication that John Smith, Nazi extraordinaire, was anything short of a pure-blooded Aryan. But that, she figured, wasn't a conversation they had the time for. Instead, she huffed, “How did you even survive in the Reich?” 

“Playing stupid,” Helen scrawled a list of items onto the dirty napkin she’d used for her toast. “Can you bring me this stuff from those old cars out back? I don’t think I can fix this mechanical portal; You’re very good at breaking things. But if we can build one of these electric sensor devices, we can find a natural portal, instead. It has to give off some sort of magnetic field if you’re right.”

“Okay, uh,” Trudy looked down at the list. “I don’t know what any of this stuff is.” 

“Right,” Helen took her hand and pulled her toward the door. “This is your first lesson in engineering. Take notes.” 

*** 

“Hey. Wake up. Something’s happening.” 

Of all the words to wake up to, John was sure those five were among the most unsettling. He shot up, nearly clocking heads with Joe. 

“What is it?” 

“I don’t know,” Joe said, staring out of the train car and into the sun. “We’re slowing down.”

“Relax,” Erich told him, looking down at his watch. “I just think we might be here.” 

“Great Falls?” John’s eyes widened. “Already? How long have I been asleep!?” 

“Awhile,” Erich smiled softly. “It was good for you, though. You needed it.” 

John felt the weight of the hidden film inside his coat, and under his breath, he cursed. It wasn’t a dream after all. None of it was. Not Emma, not the film, not the strange drug she’d given him that made him sleep for more than a day. Not Erich. Not the kiss. Not the longing for more. He’d sworn he’d never love anything again, not after how bad it felt to have loved and lost it all at once. But he hadn’t anticipated Erich. Part of him wished it hadn’t been real, but he knew that kissing him had made him feel more alive than he’d felt since he’d left New York, and the warmth of his arms around him had been the first thing to make him feel safe in awhile. That had to mean something, didn’t it? 

“We’ll wait a little while,” The stubble on his chin highlighted Joe’s prominent frown. “Give the conductor time to settle, and all that.” He pulled their map from his bag and spread it out across the floor. “There’s a lot of forest coverage between Great Falls and Helena. That could work in our favor.” 

“Or we could get lost,” Erich groaned. “145 kilometers. That’s a long, long walk.” 

“It’ll be alright,” John told him, though he wasn’t sure why. He didn’t believe it, but if Erich did, that would be enough.

Joe’s brow furrowed at the pleasant tension materializing between the pair, but he decided to ignore it. John Smith was a weird guy from the start, he figured. Take away his family, and put him in a train car for fifty hours? Probably not the best way to nurture a normal person.

Before he could think anymore about it, gunshots rang out, sharp against the silence of night. John leapt to his feet, reaching instinctively for his waist. When he remembered that his gun had been taken, he swore.

“Erich! Give me your--”

“Shut up,” Joe shoved John behind him and cautiously poked his head out the train car. “I don’t see anyone.” 

“Get in here!” Erich pulled him back inside. “They’ll shoot you!” 

“In here, we’re sitting ducks,” Joe whispered. “C’mon.” 

“I need a gun!” John hissed. “Now.” 

“You aren’t in charge anymore,” Joe grumbled. “We’ll cover you.” 

It was fun to watch John squirm, but no matter how much he did enjoy that part, he needed John to know that he could trust them. It was a lesson in group dynamics. If they were going to survive, they had to trust. 

Joe hopped down from the train car, and behind him, Erich and John followed suit. John’s legs felt like jelly, and he feared they’d buckle beneath him. He couldn’t tell if his muscles ached from lack of use or excessive strain, but either way, he reached instinctively for Erich’s arm to steady him. 

With one hand on John’s and another around his gun, Erich crept along after Joe. The crunch of the frost-covered dirt beneath their feet sounded amplified against the ring of tense quiet, but through it all, John heard the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked. He froze, too afraid to speak, like he’d only frozen once before in his life. It dawned on him then that he didn’t want to die, after all. Not yet. Not like this.

“You made it too easy,” gruffed a muscular, bald-headed man as he emerged from the bramble. “I’d at least thought you’d be harder to find.” 

Aiming his pistol, Joe shook his head. “Don’t be stupid, man. You’re outnumbered.” 

And then, a second shot rang out from a place within the trees, shielded by the remnants of summer. 

Their captor, his head blown to bits, was dead before he hit the ground. Joe and Erich trained their sights on the brush, pistols in hand, but it was John who spotted them first.

“1200 hours,” he whispered to Erich, tugging at his sleeve.

“What?” 

John almost groaned. He’d forgotten Erich’s youth -- he was too young to have seen war firsthand. “Just give this to me,” He snatched the pistol quickly and swiftly, aiming it just to the right. 

“Who are you?” He demanded. “You have ten seconds to introduce yourselves, or I shoot you both.” 

“We just saved your life,” A woman, dressed in camouflage and dawning a criss-crossing belt of ammo, swung down from her perch in a tree. Another followed soon after. "Besides, you couldn't shoot the side of a mountain with your hands shaking like that." 

“I didn’t ask you to do that,” John grumbled. “We had it under control.”

The second woman scoffed. “Until thirty seconds ago you didn’t even have a gun.” 

“Who are you?” Joe asked before John had the chance to take offence.

“My name is Miriam Katz and this is my partner, Tzofiya.” 

“Fiya, for short,” She lowered her weapon and approached the trio, holding out her hand in a reluctant gesture of cordiality. “We’ve come here because we knew you were in danger. That man,” She gestured to the corpse. “He’s part of a group called The Cabal, home to arms dealers, drug smugglers, and in your case, bounty hunters.” 

“You’re a bounty hunter, too?” Erich took a step forward. 

Miriam shook her head. “No. We work alongside the Resistance, but we’re independent from them, still. We believe you can be of importance to us, Mr. Smith.” 

John shook his head. “I just want to get to where I’m going.” 

“To Helena?” Fiya suggested, her smiling giving away how sure she really was.

“How do you know?” Joe urged. 

“He’s carrying a film in his coat,” Miriam pointed to John. “It doesn’t seem like runaways would keep something as trivial as a movie, unless it wasn’t trivial at all, and the runaways were running somewhere specific.” 

“Did you take that film from Thatcher’s?” Erich reached toward John, but silently, he backed away. 

“You’d be eaten alive in Canon City,” Fiya continued. “And the Pacific States would extradite you faster than you could plead for your life. That really only leaves Helena or Denver as a choice for you, and you're a long way from Colorado." 

“We need to see Henry.” Joe tucked his gun into his waist. “Can you take us there?” 

“In exchange for a favor,” Miriam nodded. “We take you to see Henry, and in exchange, you tell us everything you know about the inner workings of the Reich.” 

“Fine,” John nodded without thought. “Deal.” His eyes darted between Joe’s wary stare and Erich’s prominent concern. “What? I have no loyalties to them anymore, they’ve killed my son.” 

His voice was devoid of the new emotions Erich had come to expect of him. There was no sadness, no anger, no bargaining, no ache. Just a fact said as casually as a weather report. Like smalltalk. Something churned in Erich’s stomach. This, he thought, wasn’t good.

“Alright,” Fiya gestured. Come with us. We’ll be there by daybreak.”


End file.
